Dear members,
First of all, I'd like to thank you for the feedback we received from
everyone so far, and special thanks to the people who gave some more
context and explanation. Trying to arrive at a charging scheme that will
please everyone is not an easy task.
The reason the board proposes two charging schemes is because some
members requested a real alternative and difference to the existing "one
LIR account-one fee" version we have right now and that is more volume
based.
This came up previously in the charging scheme task force discussions
but also from individual members via emails or through personal contact.
Nigel and I promised at the last two GMs that we would present a new one
before the May GM this year.
So what was the board's thinking in proposing these two models?
Firstly, many people like the existing model and the board believes that
it covers the spirit of what some members want by maintaining the
financial stability of the NCC while keeping fairness and equality in
mind. The board also does not want a price per IP model because this
would have tax implications (the RIPE NCC does not sell IP addresses and
the charging scheme should reflect this) and we feel it is not in
keeping with the idea of a membership association.
We have also found in the past that having more than two options does
not work well from a voting perspective. This would add considerable
complexity to the voting in which resolutions must be approved by more
than 50% of voters to be adopted.
The second charging scheme option is one that the board believes offers
a real alternative while staying away from the price per IP aspect.
The board's thinking in making the Option B proposal is that every
registry entry consumes resources such as customer support time,
database memory, registration time, etc. regardless of the size of the
allocation. A /24 and a /12 are not so different in this regard so we
see this as fair in terms of the work required by the RIPE NCC to
maintain the registry. The reason we suggest to charge IPv4 and IPv6 in
the same way follows the same logic - there is no tax designed to move
people to IPv6. We did not want to have a political, policy-driven
charging scheme because the board believes this is the work of community
rather than for the board or membership to decide on.
I understand that the "volume-based" description could be seen as
misleading and I apologise for the misunderstanding here. The proposed
model is based on registrations and not per IP as we do not want to
indicate that IP is a sellable product but rather the RIPE NCC should
charge members for the registry services it provides.
The new charging scheme was also not proposed so that the RIPE NCC could
make more money - it takes the current budget and calculates backwards
to achieve the amount required to run the RIPE NCC. It is just a
different model to share the current cost among members.
Despite concerns that were raised on this list, the board took the
request of some members to propose a new model very seriously and we
spent quite some time to discuss and model the current scenario by
trying to be as fair as possible and sticking with the principles of a
membership organisation.
Again, we are very thankful for your input and the feedback on the two
models. We will continue to monitor discussions and we will of course
present on the Charging Scheme 2020 at the upcoming GM. We encourage you
to register your vote so you can have the final say on the two proposals.
Best regards,
Christian Kaufmann
RIPE NCC Executive Board Chairman
