[soac-newgtldapsup-wg] On "bundling", and similar to "pay as you go"

[ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Colleagues,

There was also some discussion of "bundling" as a form of support for
needs-qualified applicants in several recent calls.

I want to point out that if the fee reduction recommended in MR2, or the
similar reduction recommended by the GAC, are available to needs-qualified
applicants, that the utility of "bundling" for needs-qualified applicants
that propose to serve communities where two or more labels are necessary
is also significantly reduced.

If the largest mode of pluri-string applications planned by needs-qualified
applicants is two strings, e.g., a string in the Latin script, and a string
in a non-Latin script, then the fee cost to the applicant, while still not
the same as for a single string, is twice the recommended fee.

There will be, if not in the first round, than at some point, a need for
a larger number of strings to be operationalized as tlds by a single
applicant, within a single round, where the applicant is needs-qualified.
We have discussed this as a hypothetical for a South Asian social or
economic development non-profit, offering registrations in several
language namespaces (22 offical languages in India) over several scripts
(11 official scripts in India). Where these exceptional cases arise, I
hope we, and ICANN, will treat these as exceptions and find a means to an
appropriate level of fee contribution to ICANN for application evaluation
costs.

For this reason, as well as the obvious discomfort it causes Kurt's team
to identify what may be an imaginary construct, the "incremental cost of a
IDN variant", I also prefer the reduction we've recommended in MR2, and/or
the specific reduction recommended recently by the GAC, over "bundling".

Of course, if no substantive reduction in application fee is available
to needs-qualified applicants, then "bundling" presents a significant
means to funding requirement reductions, likely to benefit the applicant.

Eric