Registry Services “Registry Services” are, for purposes of the Agreement, defined as the following: (a) those services that are operations of the registry critical to the following tasks: the receipt of data from registrars concerning registrations of domain names and name servers; provision to registrars of status information relating to the zone servers for the TLD; dissemination of TLD zone files; operation of the registry DNS servers; and dissemination of contact and other information concerning domain name server registrations in the TLD as required by this Agreement; (b) other products or services that the Registry Operator is required to provide because of the establishment of a Consensus Policy as defined in Specification 1; (c) any other products or services that only a registry operator is capable of providing, by reason of its designation as the registry operator; and (d) material changes to any Registry Service within the scope of (a), (b) or (c) above.
Registry-‐Level Fees (a) Registry Operator shall pay ICANN a registry-‐level fee equal to (i) the registry fixed fee of US$6,250 per calendar quarter and (ii) the registry-‐level transaction fee (collectively, the “Registry-‐Level Fees”). The registry-‐level transaction fee will be equal to the number of annual increments of an initial or renewal domain name registration (at one or more levels, and including renewals associated with transfers from one ICANN-‐accredited registrar to another, each a “Transaction”), during the applicable calendar quarter multiplied by US$0.25; provided, however that the registry-‐level transaction fee shall not apply until and unless more than 50,000 Transactions have occurred in the TLD during any calendar quarter or any consecutive four calendar quarter period in the aggregate (the “Transaction Threshold”) and shall apply to each Transaction that occurred during each quarter in which the Transaction Threshold has been met, but shall not apply to each quarter in which the Transaction Threshold has not been met. Registry Operator’s obligation to pay the quarterly registry-‐level fixed fee will begin on the date on which the TLD is delegated in the DNS to Registry Operator. The first quarterly payment of the registry-‐level fixed fee will be prorated based on the number of calendar days between the delegation date and the end of the calendar quarter in which the delegation date falls. (b) Subject to Section 6.1(a), Registry Operator shall pay the Registry-‐Level Fees on a quarterly basis to an account designated by ICANN within thirty (30) calendar days following the date of the invoice provided by ICANN.
ICANN shall also issue an advisory statement containing a detailed explanation of its reasons for adopting the Temporary Policy and why the Board believes such Temporary Policy should receive the consensus support of Internet stakeholders.
Variable Registry-‐Level Fee (a) If the ICANN accredited registrars (accounting, in the aggregate, for payment of two-‐thirds of all registrar-‐level fees (or such portion of ICANN accredited registrars necessary to approve variable accreditation fees under the then-‐current registrar accreditation agreement), do not approve, pursuant to the terms of their registrar accreditation agreements with ICANN, the variable accreditation fees established by the ICANN Board of Directors for any ICANN fiscal year, upon delivery of notice from ICANN, Registry Operator shall pay to ICANN a variable registry-‐level fee, which shall be paid on a fiscal quarter basis, and shall accrue as of the beginning of the first fiscal quarter of such ICANN fiscal year (the “Variable Registry-‐Level Fee”). The fee will be calculated and invoiced by ICANN on a quarterly basis, and shall be paid by Registry Operator within sixty (60) calendar days with respect to the first quarter of such ICANN fiscal year and within twenty (20) calendar days with respect to each remaining quarter of such ICANN fiscal year, of receipt of the invoiced amount by ICANN. The Registry Operator may invoice and collect the Variable Registry-‐Level Fees from the registrars that are party to a registry-‐ registrar agreement with Registry Operator (which agreement may specifically provide for the reimbursement of Variable Registry-‐Level Fees paid by Registry Operator pursuant to this Section 6.3); provided, that the fees shall be invoiced to all ICANN accredited registrars if invoiced to any. The Variable Registry-‐Level Fee, if collectible by ICANN, shall be an obligation of Registry Operator and shall be due and payable as provided in this Section 6.3 irrespective of Registry Operator’s ability to seek and obtain reimbursement of such fee from registrars. In the event ICANN later collects variable accreditation fees for which Registry Operator has paid ICANN a Variable Registry-‐Level Fee, ICANN shall reimburse the Registry Operator an appropriate amount of the Variable Registry-‐Level Fee, as reasonably determined by ICANN. If the ICANN accredited registrars (as a group) do approve, pursuant to the terms of their registrar accreditation agreements with ICANN, the variable accreditation fees established by the ICANN Board of Directors for a fiscal year, ICANN shall not be entitled to a Variable-‐Level Fee hereunder for such fiscal year, irrespective of whether the ICANN accredited registrars comply with their payment obligations to ICANN during such fiscal year. (b) The amount of the Variable Registry-‐Level Fee will be specified for each registrar, and may include both a per-‐registrar component and a transactional component. The per-‐registrar component of the Variable Registry-‐Level Fee shall be specified by ICANN in accordance with the budget adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors for each ICANN fiscal year. The transactional component of the Variable Registry-‐Level Fee shall be specified by ICANN in accordance with the budget adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors for each ICANN fiscal year but shall not exceed US$0.25 per domain name registration (including renewals associated with transfers from one ICANN accredited registrar to another) per year.