1. What is the Add Grace Period (AGP)?
A grace period refers to a specified number of calendar days following domain registration in which the operation may be reversed and a credit may be issued to a Registrar. The Add Grace Period (AGP) is typically the five-day period following the initial registration of a domain name.
AGP was intended to allow for the no-cost cancellation of domain name registrations resulting from typos and other errors by Registrars and registrants as well as some types of fraudulent registrations.
Currently, when a domain name is registered through a Registrar, that Registrar may delete the domain name at any time during the first five calendar days of the registration or within the first five calendar days of submitting an application for a .aero name (the Add Grace Period or AGP), and receive a full credit for the registration fee from the Operator.
Once a domain name is deleted by the registry at this stage, it is immediately available for registration by any registrant through any Registrar.
2. What is the Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy?
On 17 December 2008, ICANN announced the implementation plan for the new Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy adopted by the ICANN Board on 26 June 2008. The Add Grace Period Limits Policy allows a registrar's account to be debited each month for all AGP deletions that exceed the greater of either:
- o 50 domain names, or
- o 10% of net new adds for the previous month
3. How will the Add Grace Period Limits Policy be calculated?
Registrars will no longer be entitled to a refund of the registration fee by Operators for new registrations of domain names deleted during the AGP that exceed the 10% or 50 threshold maximum number of AGP deletes in a given month, unless an exemption has been granted by SITA.
For example: For example, if a Registrar had in a month 1,000 net new registrations in the .aero Registry, for US$30,000 (based on a price of US$30 per domain name registration), and had 250 AGP deletes, the Registrar would be entitled to a refund of US$3000 for 100 AGP deletes (10% of 1,000 net new registrations at US$30 per domain name registration). The Registrar would not be entitled to an additional refund of US$4500 for the 150 "excess" deletes made during that month.
- o Net new registrations - 1000
- o Price for net new registrations - $30,000 (30*1000)
- o Number of AGP deletes - 250
- o 10% of net new registrations (allowed deletes within AGP for a full refund) - 100
- o Excessive deletes = 150 (250-100)
- o Allowed refund under the new AGP policy - $3000 (100*30)
Prior to this Policy, the Registrar would have received a full refund for all the names deleted during the AGP.
4. Can a registrar receive an exemption from the Add Grace Period Limits Policy?
The Policy provides that a Registrar may seek an exemption from SITA for the registration fees for excess deletes made during the AGP. The Registrar must supply, on or before the last day of the month following the deletion of the domain name(s), at least the following information to SITA:
- o Registrar Name
- o IANA ID number
- o Date of request
- o Date names were deleted
- o Number of names deleted
- o List of names affected
- o Extraordinary circumstance/reason for request
- o A statement that the information in the Exemption Request is true to best of the Registrar's knowledge.
SITA may choose to require additional information to process exemption requests. Each Registrar's exemption request must describe, with supporting documentation, the specific extraordinary circumstances upon which the request is based and explain how, at the time the names were deleted, any particular extraordinary circumstance was not known, reasonably could not be known, and was outside of the Registrar's control. For example, an unforeseen defect in software development might not necessarily be considered to be in the Registrar's control.
Submission of an exemption request should create no presumption of approval of the request. Grant of any exemption request is at SITA's sole and reasonable discretion.
For more information about the Exemption process please click here.
5. When will the Add Grace Period Limits Policy be implemented?
The Add Grace Period Limits Policy is effective 00:00 UTC on 01 May 2009.
6. What will be the impact to the existing reports and invoices?
The monthly invoice (Invoice.pdf) will reflect the number of transactions that led to the Add Grace Period Policy. The monthly billing report (text.txt) will have a new row with deletions, Excessive AGP Delete Charge [ |nn|ffff.ff ] where "nn" is number of counted excess deletions in last billing cycle and "ffff.ff" is the total amount calculated for excess deletions in last billing cycle.
7. What new reports will be provided to the registrars?
Six (6) days after the end of each month, the number of excessive deletes will be calculated. Once the excess deletions are computed and the charges applied to the calculated excess deletions, the registrar accounts will be billed and an email notification will be sent with computations documenting how the excess deletion charge was determined. The email notification will show the computation supporting the amount billed to the registrar's account.
8. If we create 10 domain names on April 30, 2009 and delete them on May 3, 2009, are the 10 deletes counted in the AGP deletes for April or for May?
The deletes are counted as deletes for April 2009 since the domains were created in April 2009.
