RIPE NCC Financial Status and Billing Procedures Daniel Karrenberg Manager RIPE NCC January 24th 1995 1. Contributors Committee All those organisations contributing to NCC funding have been invited to advise TERENA on NCC funding matters. For details see ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/new-registry. The con- tributors committee has met on September 21st 1994 and agreed on the activity plan as amended by the last RIPE meeting as well as the expenditure budget prepared by the NCC which is presented below. There was also consensus that a more usage based charging scheme should be introduced in 1996 and the NCC committed to develop alternatives by mid 1995. Although there was a clear majority opinion about the charg- ing scheme for 1995, consensus could not be reached. Those dissenting have thus far not proposed an alternative scheme. Despite several efforts by TERENA and the NCC no consensus has been reached at this point. In this situation there is no alternative for the NCC but to work to the charging scheme endorsed by the majority and continue asking the contributors for a resolution. At this point contributions equivalent to 70% of the planned expen- diture have been confirmed according to the majority endorsed scheme. For more details see below. - 2 - 2. 1995 Expenditure Budget The 1994 budget based on 3.6FTE is presented for comparison. "1995 Contributors Committee" is the budget presented to and endorsed by the Contributors Committee on September 21st 1994. It is based on 7 FTE available at the end of the year. "1995, Working Budget" incorporates corrections due to better data and is the budget being worked to in 1995. This budget is conservative because the revenue situation from current customers is not stable and the growth in cus- tomers is hard to predict. It should be noted that as soon as significant additional revenue is generated from the growth in the number of customers, resources will have to be increased beyond this budget. 1994 1995 1995 for Contributors Working comparison Committee Budget _____________________________________________________________ Staff 160000 290000 294000 Computing Equipment 15000 15000 15000 Computing running costs 5000 5000 5000 Travel 30000 40000 35000 Rent & fixed service 25000 30000 34000 Variable service 5000 5000 5000 RARE Services 5000 10000 10000 Recruitment 2500 2500 Unforseen 10000 10000 7000 _____________________________________________________________ 245000 407500 407500 ____________________________________ - 3 - 3. 1995 Charging Scheme Below you find the the charging and billing scheme. For more details see ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/new- registry/billing.txt. 1995 RIPE NCC BILLING PROCEDURE and FEE SCHEDULE 1. The 1995 fee schedule is as follows: Enterprise registries: ECU 1000.- / year Service Provider Registries Small ECU 2000.- / year Medium ECU 6000.- / year Large ECU 12000.- / year Start-up fee for registries established during 1995 ECU 2000.- 2. Registries established during the course of the year are charged as follows: established during charge 1st quarter start-up fee + full yearly fee 2nd quarter start-up fee + 3/4 yearly fee 3rd quarter start-up fee + 1/2 yearly fee 4th quarter start-up fee + 1/4 yearly fee 3. The start-up fee is due with the first invoice. 4. Billing is in advance. 5. The billing period is the calendar year. 6. By prior special arrangement half-yearly and quarterly billing is possible under the following conditions: - The minimum amount invoiced is ECU 1000.-. - An ECU 65.- service charge applies to each invoice. 7. Bills are due on the last day of the month preceding the billing period or 30 days after issuing of the invoice, whichever is later. 8. Late payments will be subject to an late payment charges of ECU 100.- and cause an immediate reduction in NCC service level. - 4 - Interest according to the prevailing bank rate in the Netherlands may be charged on any late payments. 4. 1995 Revenue Situation Notes Below you find a summary of the state of RIPE NCC Income for 1995 based on the above charging scheme. This reflects the state of confirmations and commitments on January 23rd to the best of the NCC's knowledge. This status has been com- municated regularly to the NCC contributors on the contribu- tors committee mailing list. This will continue as commit- ments and payments are received. The Estimated column has a fair amount of safety built in. This is to account for cus- tomers dropping off and obviously wrong estimates. Explanation of the Tables REGISTRIES the (hopefully) paying customers. registry IDs are assigned by the NCC and start with the ISO3166 country code. GRANTSorganisations contributing without running a local registry. This income is not structural and thus will be used to finance non-structural services. Estimated a rough estimation of appropriate contributions by registry size. Confirmed contributions confirmed informally (e-mail, aurally, ...). Correction difference between Confirmed and Estimated. The pur- pose of this is to keep an eye on how accurate the estimates are and most importantly whether the corrected total still meets the expenditure budget. Committed contributions confirmed by written commitment, i.e. the signed service agreement. PAID payments received. REGISTRIES Estimated Confirmed Correction Committed PAID - 5 - _______________________________________________________________________ ae.gulf 2000 at.aconet 6000 6000 0 6000 at.eunet 6000 at.spardat 2000 2000 0 at.vianet 2000 be.belnet 6000 6000 0 be.eunet 6000 be.inet 2000 2000 0 be.interpac 2000 be.kredietbank 1000 bg.eunet 2000 ch.chuug 12000 ch.switch 12000 12000 0 12000 cy.univ 2000 cz.cesnet 6000 2000 -4000 2000 cz.eunet 2000 2000 0 de.belwue 2000 de.dfn 12000 12000 0 de.eunet 12000 de.gtn 2000 2000 0 2000 de.maz 2000 de.nacamar 2000 2000 2000 de.roka 2000 de.xlink 6000 6000 0 dk.denet 6000 6000 0 6000 dk.dknet 6000 dk.telebit 2000 2000 0 es.eunet 6000 es.rediris 6000 6000 0 fi.alands 2000 fi.clinet 2000 2000 0 fi.datanet 6000 6000 0 fi.edu 6000 1000 -5000 fi.eunet 6000 fi.funet 6000 6000 0 6000 fi.helsinki 6000 fi.nordic 2000 2000 0 fi.oulu 6000 fr.eunet 12000 fr.jeux 1000 fr.oleane 6000 6000 0 fr.renater 12000 12000 0 fr.societe-g 1000 fr.telecom 1000 fr.transpac 12000 12000 0 fr.transrel 6000 6000 0 gr.ariadnet 2000 2000 0 gr.forth 2000 2000 0 hr.carnet 2000 hu.hungarnet 2000 2000 0 2000 ie.eireann 2000 ie.eunet 6000 ie.heanet 6000 6000 0 6000 - 6 - ie.iol 2000 2000 il.ilan 2000 2000 0 2000 il.netvision 6000 2000 -4000 is.eunet 2000 2000 0 2000 it.alpcom 2000 2000 0 it.eunet 12000 it.garr 12000 12000 0 it.itnet 2000 2000 0 it.nettuno 2000 lb.lir 2000 lt.litnet 2000 lu.eunet 2000 lu.restena 2000 2000 0 2000 mk.marnet 2000 nl.erisccon 1000 nl.ibm 6000 2000 -4000 nl.nlnet 12000 nl.philips 6000 nl.surfnet 12000 12000 0 nl.unisource 6000 6000 0 nl.xs4all 2000 no.daxnet 2000 2000 0 no.eunet 2000 no.telepost 6000 2000 -4000 no.uninett 6000 6000 0 6000 pl.eunet 2000 2000 0 pl.nask 2000 2000 0 pt.ccful 2000 pt.eunet 2000 pt.rccn 2000 2000 0 ro.rnc 2000 2000 0 ru.msu 2000 2000 0 ru.relcom 6000 ru.rosprint 6000 2000 -4000 se.electrolux 1000 se.eunet 2000 se.lund 2000 1000 -1000 se.sunet 12000 12000 0 12000 se.swipnet 12000 6000 -6000 se.transpac 6000 6000 0 se.unisource 6000 6000 0 si.arnes 2000 2000 0 si.eiger 2000 si.eunet 2000 sk.eunet 2000 sk.sanet 6000 6000 0 su.demos 6000 uk.bt 12000 12000 0 12000 uk.btent 1000 1000 0 uk.cns 6000 uk.demon 6000 6000 0 uk.energis 1000 uk.eunet 12000 uk.genesis 2000 - 7 - uk.istel 6000 uk.janet 12000 12000 0 uk.marconi 1000 uk.mercury 12000 uk.nhs 1000 1000 0 uk.pipex 12000 12000 0 uk.racal 2000 uk.royal 1000 uk.trafalgar 1000 1000 0 uk.vbcnet 2000 2000 0 _______________________________________________________________________ Total 542000 287000 510000 80000 0 ______________________________________________________ %of Exp. Budget 133 70 125 20 0 GRANTS Confirmed Paid ___________________________ de.ecrc 3000 eu.cern 3000 eu.esa 5000 fr.inria 2000 ___________________________ 13000 0 _________________ 5. 1995 Commitment and Billing Procedure Due to the establishment of TERENA, other work pressures and some coordination problems it took longer than expected to produce the final agreement and work out the billing pro- cedures. Closer liaison procedures between the TERENA secre- tariat and the RIPE NCC needed to be established for 1995 in order to make it possible to reliably determine the service level of a customer at any time. These procedures have been established now. The final service agreements have been circulated on December 22nd. The agreement text, fee schedule, billing procedures etc. can be found in: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/new-registry 1995 billing has now been initiated for all registries which have either confirmed, committed or both. As additional commitments come in these customers will be billed as well. Confirmation only will not usually cause - 8 - billing to be initiated. All questions and correspondence associated with this should be directed to . They can also help you if you prefer the documents to be sent by e-mail or surface mail. But please use this facility only if absolutely neces- sary. 6. Service Levels From February 1st 1995 the Committed column will determine the service level a registry receives from the NCC: Registries which have signed the agreement will be ser- viced normally as long as they have no overdue out- standing invoices. All other registries as well as individuals will be served only as time permits and after all requests from paying customers have been dealt with. Because the agreements have "only" been available for about a month now, registries which have confirmed contributions but not signed the agreement yet will be treated as if they had signed until February 28th 1995. 7. What you should do! Please check the entries of the registries you are responsi- ble for in the table above. If there is no confirmation (see column 3 in the table above), please contact the NCC as soon as possible at specifying your charging category. If we have no confirmation your requests will be processed on a time-permitting basis only from February 1st (next week). If there is no commitment (see column 5 in the table above), please pick up the files in ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/new- registry, sign and send in the agreement. We also have hardcopies available during the meeting. Please note that you need to send two signed copies if you require a copy signed by TERENA to be returned to you. If we have not received a signed commitment by February 28th your requests will be processed on a time-permitting basis only. - 9 - If you are not sure that the billing information (address, VAT#, etc.) we have is correct, ask to send you an electronic form with the current information filled in and return it to us. Local registries should include their registry ID prom- inently in their requests to ensure the correct service level. If you have any questions or comments, please contact . 8. 1994 Finances The accounts for 1994 have not been finalised. The financial report for 1994 is expected in March after the TERENA audi- tors have reviewed the books. There have been some problems with billing for new regis- tries in 1994. If you have any questions about 1994 bills, please contact . The 1995 procedures have been tightened to prevent such problems from occurring again. 9. Conclusions Commitments will have to reach the level of budgeted expen- diture soon or expenditure levels will have to be reduced with serious consequences for the NCC. The NCC is already suffering from this situation as it is. This is a problem which needs resolution by the contributors (committee). The NCC can only help with this but not solve the problem. Those willing to contribute now should please sign the ser- vice agreement as soon as possible.