From the rising cost files:
If you’re in the market for getting or renewing a dot com or dot net domain name you’d be well advised to do it sooner rather than later. VeriSign is raising the prices of all dot com and dot net domain names – effective October 1, 2008.
Since VeriSign manages ALL dot com and dot net domains, the price increase will affect every domain registrar and domain owner on Earth.
The wholesale price of a .com domain will go from $6.42 to $6.86 while .net will rise from $3.85 to $4.23.
The pricing increases should come as no surprise since it’s all part of the deal that VeriSign negotiated with ICANN back in 2006. The ICANN deal was opposed by those who at the time disagreed with the pricing increase model. The pricing model enables VeriSign to raise domain pricing in at least 4 of 6 years by 7 percent which could lead to a 2012 .com domain price of $7.86.
Though I’m personally not thrilled at the prospect of increased .com and .net pricing, I do remember the Dark Ages when Network Solutions was the only registrar and regular people like me could not buy a .com domain name for less than $70.