New gTLD registries ask ICANN for fee reduction and more efforts to promote new gTLDs

In a letter sent to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), registries of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) – represented in the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) – have asked the organisation for a temporary offset of registry fixed fees. Noting that ‘consumer awareness of new gTLDs is not as great as anticipated’ and that ‘a number of gTLD operators are struggling’, the RySG proposes that registry operators of all delegated new gTLDs receive a 75% credit for their $6,250 quarter fixed registry free. Registries also ask ICANN to consider creating a fund ‘to promote universal awareness of new gTLDs to the general Internet user community, and universal acceptance of new gTLDs across the Internet’.