Domain Registration Fees to Be Lowered
The Internet Foundation has decided to lower the price of registering a dot-ee domain by 6.5 percent. The 1.2 euro decrease means the fee will be 17 euros a year as of May 2012.
In a statement, the Foundation noted that the fee for the end consumer is determined by registrars taking into account the competition, and it may be higher or lower than the baseline. VAT will be also be added to the 17 euros, making it somewhat higher.
The date of May 2012 is linked to the completion of the country's domain name reform in late April 2011.
"Registration of domains has been active and the accruing number of domains allows the fee to be lowered. The Estonian Internet Foundation is among the EU's most efficient top-level domain administrators," said the chairman of the board of the Internet Foundation, Marek-Andres Kauts.
Kauts said the fee would be sufficient to cover investments into the DNSSec security application.
At the supervisory board meeting on December 16, the management board gave an overview of the activities in 2011 and presented the 2012-2014 project. The largest investment, DNSSec, is approximately 600,000 euros in three years. The budget for 2012 is 1.4 million euros, with a reserve of 910,000 euros.
The draft strategy also calls for replication of the system, replacement of domain name servers and launch of anycast international servers to accelerate searches. It will also continue integrating with the international internet community.
Kristopher Rikken