<HTML>In a message dated 12/2/02 1:06:32 PM Romance Standard Time, kurtis@kurtis.pp.se writes: Kurtis, All, now that the discussion on the list came back to the previous (good) level I am willing to give it a try and explain the fee raise. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">The burst of the dot.com bubble is no news. It was there a year ago. Businesses adopted and cut back to cope with it. Some did better, some did worse. RIPE NCC seems to belong in the later category. If this would have been a Ltd, the share holders would be asking if the management and accountants was a sleep. </BLOCKQUOTE> The burst of the dot.com bubble has indeed impacted the RIPE-NCC, but not as much as one can imagine: the Internet is still growing, although there are less players providing services, and therefore the amount of addresses to be assigned/allocated is obviously still growing. In addition, as already explained by Axel, closing LIRs create at least as much work as creating new ones. Here are some facts for you to consider that may help understanding the situation better. 1) The RIPE-NCC business model during the last few years was biased for a number of reasons, in particular a Dutch law that prevent a non profit organization to accumulate monies beyond a certain amount (putting a limit to the contingency fund), and the too conservative assumptions made concerning the growth. In the last 3 years the Ripe-NCC fees were reduced each year because the number of new LIR each year was increasing more than forecasted and the total income was exceeding the contingency fund amount. In other words in the last 3 years most of the expenditures were supported by the influx of new LIRs coming in each year, which "artificially" reduced the fees for existing LIRs. This was no longer the case in 2002, where the amount of new LIR turned out to be overestimated, which caused, for the first time, a big hole in the budget, which was covered by the contingency fund. This old model obviously no longer works, so the LIRs have now to pay for 2003 the "actual" fees, i .e. more or less the fees paid in 1999. 2) The vast majority of expenses of the RIPE-NCC are wages. The RIPE-NCC is now comprised of about 100 employees. These people were hired during the fat-cows years both to support and improve the core activities such as registration services and database, as well as activities proposed during various RIPE working group meetings, and approved by the AGM. To fire 1 employee in NL takes as much money as to pay his salary for a full year (the financial impact/improvement would be apparent only on the second year), so since the contingency fund was almost gone we had to recover the money and replenish the reserves as explained by Axel. 3) The board is now concerned (and focusing) with long term scenarios that guarantee the stability of the core services and take in account the industry situation, the needs of the membership, and their willingness (or not) to pay for additional services. Needless to say since last August, when we became aware of the situation, Axel was asked to reduce as much as possible the expenditures (but since most of the cost are wages there was not much he could save) and to provide different possible scenarios for the future. Year 2003 will be a transition year: we believe the membership survey will help in understanding what the membership expect the RIPE-NCC to do and whether it is prepared to pay for such activities (beyond the core activities). We will also closely monitor the discussion in the LIR-wg and other lists, and try to collect as much input as possible from RIPE meetings. We will then work with Axel to prepare a business plan for 2004 that reflects what we learned. If you have input don't hesitate to approach me (or any other member of the board) at RIPE meetings or write mail to me. Best Regards Daniele</HTML>