Washington, D.C. — In response to news that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has officially renewed the contract through which the government sanctions Verisign’s monopoly control over the “.com” domain registry—an announcement buried on the Friday after Thanksgiving—the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“The NTIA just gave Verisign cover to maintain its monopoly grip on .COM registry management—which costs more than a billion dollars a year in the aggregate to American consumers, including small businesses, who own domain names,” said Laurel Kilgour, Research Manager at the American Economic Liberties Project. “At a time when there is clear support from both Democrats and Republicans to rein in Verisign, the incoming Trump administration must use this opportunity to nominate an NTIA head that will not cow to the demands of monopolists, dismiss civil servants who have done Verisign’s bidding, commit to a real NTIA investigation into the cost of providing .COM management services, and finally bring an antitrust suit against Verisign.”

“Assistant Secretary of Commerce Alan Davidson—a former Big Tech lobbyist—has failed to do his job,” Kilgour added, “and failed in a way that has benefitted well-connected partisan figures like Verisign and Amazon board member Jamie Gorelick. To be clear, this failure is not Davidson’s alone, but instead reflects deeply ingrained problems in an agency whose officials have been more interested in taking field trips to Verisign’s headquarters than upholding their statutory mandate to promote competition and protect the public interest.”

The deal, announced last Friday, rolls over terms the first Trump Administration’s NTIA accepted from Verisign without meaningful negotiation, locking in years of price hikes at more than twice the rate of inflation while blocking the possibility of future competitive bidding requirements. According to Economic Liberties’ July policy brief, current fair market prices for .com wholesale domains range from $0.87 to $4.37– less than half than Verisign’s $10.26 price for September 2024 and far less than the $13.45 Verisign would be allowed to charge by 2030 if existing terms are rolled over. The brief highlights that such fair market prices would cover all of Verisign’s costs– including what the NTIA calls maintaining “critical functions of the Internet’s technical architecture”– while still affording Verisign a reasonable profit. Although the NTIA did not seek any public comments on this contract renewal, past renewal cycles have revealed widespread public recognition that Verisign’s prices are exorbitant. Moreover, as Economic Liberties has explained in past public statements, Verisign’s attempts to deflect blame to other layers of the domain name market does not lessen the need to address Verisign’s own abuse of market power.

The Biden-Harris administration’s 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Competition mandates that all federal agencies, including the Department of Commerce, have an obligation to promote competition across the economy. NTIA’s Office of International Affairs oversees NTIA’s relationship with Verisign. NTIA’s own statutory mandate includes an express obligation to “advance… the full development of competition.” The original policy directive that led to Verisign’s management of the .com top level domain expressly rejected requests to give private sector actors antitrust immunity in the management of top level domains– as does NTIA’s contract with Verisign. Although Verisign’s control over the .com top level domain is also partially governed by a contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (“ICANN”), ICANN too has a competition mandate in its bylaws.

In October 2024, the Capitol Forum reported FOIA’d documents showing that Davidson and other NTIA staff had built a “cozy relationship” with Verisign, including a visit to the company’s Virginia headquarters. In November, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jerry Nadler sent a letter calling on the NTIA and DOJ to ensure competition in the top-level domain market. The Warren-Nadler letter followed another letter from three House Republicans probing the NTIA on its Verisign renewal process.

Read Economic Liberties’ Policy Brief, “A Call for .Com-petition: Reining in Verisign’s Monopoly Over The Internet’s Most Popular Top Level Domain,” here.

Read the Ninth Circuit’s previous ruling on private antitrust allegations against Verisign here, and a detailed complaint from the same case here. 

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.