[members-discuss] Billing scheme

From: members-discuss <members-discuss-bounces at ripe.net> on behalf of Tobias Weinfeld <tobias.weinfeld at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 10:20
To: "members-discuss at ripe.net" <members-discuss at ripe.net>
Subject: Re: [members-discuss] Billing scheme

Dear colleagues,

the removement of the ability of a quarterly or half-annually billing scheme is in my opinion a bad move.

Unfortunately I have no data prior to 1998, but at least since this year it was already possible for LIRs to choose from a quarterly, half-annually or annually charging scheme. It simplified and still simplifies the process for newcomers to become LIR. Altough the fees were higher than today we break here with a tradition that lasted more than 20 years (!).

This change will decrease the amount of reminders, yes, but it also will decrease the amount of newcomers, small companies or even technical interested natural persons which plan to become LIR at RIPE. Furthermore the last subnets of the IPv4 pool, which is already quite scarce, won't go anymore to many newcomers, it will possibly go more to companies which already have enough means to buy IPv4 from the market. Those who have more financial opportunities can easily create multiple LIR accounts because they anyway pay annually as usual, so those who are affected are newcomers and small companies.

I am strict against this change. It was an important simplification and I see no real reason for removing it after more than 20 years because in a few years when the pool is exhausted also the aforementioned heavy burden will be extenuated. Especially when it comes to IPv6 the next years it should be easily possible for newcomers to become LIR; because it is and should be a membership and not an investment.

I also want to criticize that this was announced on a Friday, three days before Christmas, only about one month (now two months) the invoices for Q1/Y2019 will be sent and after expiration of the termination deadline of 15th December 2018.

In my opinion, RIPE NCC is one of the fairest and liberal RIR - but that change isn't fair, it is more than astonishing.

Whilst we are fortune to be in a position that this change doesn’t particularly affect us in terms of cash flow, I completely agree that this has been handled very poorly by RIPE in that it came out of the blue over the holiday period with very little notice.

As for the justification provided by RIPE; “reducing complexity for our members” is highly disingenuous given that there was already an option to pay annually.
The claim of process efficiencies and decreasing administrative overheads also seems very strange given that invoicing , payment processing and credit control can all be largely automated using a wide selection of off-the-shelf software or services. Surely this shouldn’t be an issue for a technology focused organisation?

Edward Dore
Freethought Internet

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