We are still baffled why ICANN does not open up the DNS management agreements to competitive bidding like most other gov contracts. Competition is healthy for product evolution and pricing and often drives the pricing of services down and quality of service up. WHY would ICANN settle for less is baffling but speculation seems to be coming true about the true nature of ICANN. Prices go up and service goes down because of this monopoly, no bid, no liability structure that ICANN supports with Verisign.

ICANN should be protecting the millions of URL owners with open competition NOT fixed term, perpetual, no bid and no liability contracts. ICANN has changed since its founding and now the industry and market sentiment has little faith in ICANN decision making but continue to stay connected to the hip with Verisign and act on Verisign best interest, not the public's which is ICANN role? The structure and actions with ICANN and Verisign is the weakest part of the global Internet. There should be a competitive RFP for operation of the .NET and .COM TLD's and show real justification and detailed technical analysis of such pricing increases. There is no other enterprise that gives service providers a full liability waiver and no accountability and the ability to increase prices without justification. To give a service provider like Verisign who makes over $600 million dollars yearly to manage a database at no risk, no competition and no liability agreement is almost criminal. There has been no publication from ICANN or Versign of such justifiable reason for this clearly one sided, power play agreement. If you want better service for its millions of users, which is ICANN role, open the bidding, lower the price, put SLA's in place like all other enterprise software companies do when servicing a client. Why is ICANN difference and why is ICANN not doing the right thing in this case baffles many in the industry.

ICANN and VERISIGN are abusing its power by lack of real, accountable and open actions with this no bid, no liability, perpetual agreement on the .net renewal. What started 25 years ago, now has many in the space with little confidence in the DNS and ROOT Zone system manage by ICANN. With such a monopoly and connected at the hip, ICANN and Verisign continue to show the market through one sided actions. Protecting the millions of URL owners with better service, open competition and pricing should be the roll ICANN takes but the opposite continues to happen. NO RISK for Verisign should be concerning in this agreement. ICANN, try taking the end users into consideration, not just the lobby powerful, gift giving Verisign when acting on these one sided agreements that affects millions of users.