Local cost related to running a TLD

[Jorge Amodio]

I'm following up from Norbert's message and Rafik's question.

Good question indeed Rafik, and to be frank I don't think I've an easy answer.

I'm not quite sure that the argument about the cost for running ccTLD
in developing countries isn't so high is entirely accurate. High
relative or compared to what ?

Perhaps some of our friends at the ccNSO can provide some insight.

I'd expect that more developed countries with a higher GDP and better
communication infrastructure will have a more costly operation than
others, on the other hand there may be some very popular ccTLDs like
.tv that may have a high operating cost but also a good revenue stream
from their operations with a GDP that is about 1/3 of ICANN's yearly
budget.

In some countries, like Argentina, where we registered the ccTLD in
1987 but got our actual first real connection to the Internet in 1990,
all the associated costs were absorbed by a special project managed
through UNDP but funded by the government with the goal to modernize
their ITC infrastructure (actually it didn't exist, everything was
Telex and mostly paper).

Since then the ccTLD has been operated by the same entity (Ministry of
Foreign Affairs) and still the operational costs -which I'd probably
guess are totally unknown- are covered 100% by the government,  domain
registrations are still free in .AR.

Other places, such as Brazil, and I believe Carlos can provide much
more info than me, implemented a pioneering model when they
established the Internet Steering Committee and among other Internet
related activities the .BR ccTLD registry started to operate if my
memory does not fail around 1995 and later started charging for domain
registrations, which created a very healthy revenue stream that has
been always reinvested to improve services and governance.

I'd probably guess that it does not cost much to operate .US.

Providing good connectivity, availability and reliability, with
servers located in the country and outside the country is not cheap
for a developing country, perhaps the assumption that the cost could
be lower is related to labor costs.

About the $185K I've no clue where that number came from, but I
believe it's an estimate based on the number of resources that may
take to complete the string evaluation.

Sometime ago I was trying to see if there was any financial study
related to the overall cost of the gTLD program since its inception,
I've been browsing some of the financial statements but the
information is not clear and incomplete.

So, do we know if ICANN ever looked at the overall cost of the gTLD program ?

Regards
Jorge