Summary

  • RIPE NCC tells a sponsoring LIR whose contract with an End User has ended to submit a Stop Sponsorship request before 31 December 2026; it says it can process only requests through the designated form. The adopted 2027 charging scheme uses 31 December resource data and sends invoices in January.
  • The automated PI-resource form launched in 2025 stops sponsorship immediately after confirmation. Ending sponsorship, returning the resource and closing an LIR account are different acts. The 2027 charge for an independent resource assignment registration is EUR 75.

A customer can leave a contract. The registry bill still needs a form. RIPE NCC's October member update makes the division unusually plain: if the sponsoring organisation no longer has a contract with a sponsored party, file Stop Sponsorship before 31 December 2026 to avoid related fees. RIPE NCC says it will process only submissions through that form. The 2027 charging scheme then counts the resource data held on 31 December and sends invoices in January. A private breakup and a public billing record have different switches.

The price attached to that record is concrete. The adopted RIPE-867 scheme charges EUR 75 for each independent Internet number resource assignment registration; the member's LIR account has a separate EUR 1,894 annual fee. A member that closes an LIR account faces its own complete-and-valid closure request by 31 December. Neither instruction substitutes for the Stop Sponsorship path when a former customer still appears under the member's sponsorship. The bill follows the recorded unit and the cutoff inventory, not the date someone stopped forwarding a service email.

RIPE NCC had already seen how a calendar can turn clerical cleanup into a surge. Registration Services manager Marco Schmidt reported about 2,200 requests to end sponsorship of independent resources during 2024. Roughly 60% were processed in November and December; 40% in December alone. The fee changes adopted for 2025 preceded that rush. Staff had to process a sudden pile of requests, which delayed members and End Users. The problem was not a lack of a nominal deadline. It was a workflow that made the year's last weeks a crowded exit door.

In November 2025, RIPE NCC introduced an automated self-service route for ending sponsorship of Provider Independent resources. The form asks for one End User per request, a deliberate brake on selecting the wrong customer. The LIR chooses all resources for that End User or only specific resources no longer sponsored. Once the request is reviewed and confirmed, the sponsorship stops immediately and automatically, with a ticket for reference. Schmidt said the old manual confirmation took at least one working day. The new form shifts the control point from an analyst's queue to the member's explicit selection and confirmation.

The next choice matters just as much as the first. Stopping sponsorship does not itself return the number resource to a free pool. A separate option initiates a resource return, and that requires confirmation from the resource holder. Merely stopping sponsorship does not require that holder confirmation. If the End User wants to keep the resources, RIPE NCC says it will tell them to arrange a new Sponsoring LIR. A member can therefore end its service relationship without making the customer's addresses vanish. That is why the form must ask which resources and which outcome the member means.

The institution has also blocked a neat December trick. Its 2025 explanation says that ending a Sponsoring LIR Agreement before 31 December and signing a new agreement for the same resource after 1 January will be treated as uninterrupted. It also says a renewed sponsorship requires a new agreement. The first rule protects the annual fee base against a holiday disappearing act; the second makes a genuine later return a new contractual step. Those are separate decisions, not a single toggle on a website.

The 2026 reminder closes the loop on the approaching bill. It directs members to review sponsored independent resources and says only the specific Stop Sponsorship form will be processed. RIPE-867 sets the 31 December 2026 data snapshot for 2027 fees. A member who has lost a customer but left the sponsorship in RIPE NCC's register is looking at the wrong ledger if it relies on the terminated contract alone. The available records do not identify a particular wrongly billed member; a dated ticket, the cutoff inventory and the January invoice would settle any such case.

This is a small piece of registry power with a large practical edge. RIPE NCC did not merely publish a fee schedule. It chose the only accepted channel by which an old relationship becomes a changed registry state before the charge is calculated. The automation can spare staff a December mountain and spare members a day's manual wait. It also makes the exact End User, selected resource, confirmation time and resulting registry change the receipts that decide whether the annual bill is accurate. A contract may end quietly. The register requires someone to press the right button.

RIPE NCC originals