VeriSign, the company that globally manages the two most popular top-level domains (TLDs), has announced that it will raise the wholesale rates of .com and .net domain names this 15th of October 2007. Domain names ending in .com, from $6.00, will be increased to $6.42; and .net domains, from $3.50 to $3.85.

This rather huge increase will necessarily mean that domain registrars and resellers will have to increase the retail prices of these domain names. I use ctcd.com, and they currently sell domain names for $8.94 per year. This rate is indeed a far cry from the time when Internet addresses sold for $35 per year, but — in Internet time — that was ages ago when Network Solutions held the monopoly.

In their press release, Verisign cites the deployment of technical upgrades, necessitated by heightened traffic volume and cyber attacks, as the reasons for the price jump. Below is a quote from the official press release:

Since 1999, the volume of Internet traffic and domain name system (DNS) queries on VeriSign’s global infrastructure has increased from an average of 1 billion queries per day in the year 2000 to nearly 30 billion queries per day today. Traffic volume continues to increase with the emergence of consumer-driven services, the surge in web-connected wireless devices and the proliferation of DNS-centric technologies and services. In addition, the .com and .net infrastructures are continually being fortified and scaled to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. Security exploits have grown by 700 percent since 2000 and are projected to increase by 50 percent in 2007 and 2008.

In other countries, on the other hand, country-specific TLDs are getting cheaper. Country-specific TLD, or ccTLD, refers to the set of domain names that end in a two-letter extension that is unique for each country. In the Philippines, we have .ph domains; in Japan, it’s .jp; etc. Some countries have given up their exclusive right to their TLD, such as Tuvalu, which began offering its .tv domain names to the international market in 1998.

In China, .cn domains are now sold much cheaper at an unbelievable 1 yuan (about $0.13) per year. The China Internet Network Information Center reports that the reason for this move is to encourage their citizens to veer away from dependence on overseas Internet servers. This might seem alarmist on the part of the Chinese government, but on the other hand, it will certainly spell a sharp rise in the usage of .cn addresses.

The Filipino company that administers our ccTLD, dotPH, still retails .ph domains at $35 annually. What’s more, two years is the required initial purchase. This is an archaic system, a throw-back to the era of 28.8kbps modems.

Still, the allure of the .com domain, in that it produces much higher name recall and brand attractiveness than any TLD can, will mean that individuals and businesses will most likely prefer mycompany.com over mycompany.ph. This is probably what Verisign is banking on.

But I expect that there will be much complaining and clamoring for status quo, especially from Web warriors and Netizens, especially bloggers.