Summary

  • LACNIC requires payment in US dollars and uses the dollar as its functional currency. That choice can be reasonable for an institution with dollar-denominated prices, collections, financing and many expenses, but it places the exchange-rate risk between invoice and payment on members whose revenues are commonly earned in pesos, reais, soles, guaranies or other local currencies.
  • The current IPv4 ISP schedule shows the same currency mismatch at every scale. The annual Nano fee rose from USD 600 in 2024 to USD 614 in 2025 and USD 633 in 2026, while the 2024 Member Assembly approved automatic annual adjustment by US consumer inflation. A member can therefore face both a higher dollar price and a weaker local currency.
  • A constant USD 600 invoice illustrates the exposure without claiming to measure affordability. At World Bank annual-average official rates, its local-currency equivalent rose between 2015 and 2024 by about 62% in Brazil, 44% in Chile, 49% in Colombia, 16% in Mexico and 47% in Uruguay; Argentina's official-rate equivalent increased far more, but multiple rates and rapid inflation make that figure an especially poor measure of real operating burden.
  • Existing protections are narrow. LACNIC offers an early-payment discount for ISP renewals and a fee-waiver route for qualifying non-profit projects, yet ordinary small commercial networks have no published automatic currency-shock corridor, local-currency settlement rule or region-wide instalment right. Late settlement can lead from surcharge to resource recovery and eventual revocation.
  • The answer is not to make LACNIC speculate in every regional currency. It is to publish member-side currency sensitivity, set pre-agreed shock relief, separate core registry cost from optional activity, use reserves to smooth extraordinary dislocations and require the Member Assembly to decide explicitly who bears exchange-rate risk.

The fee is fixed only from Montevideo's side of the invoice

A LACNIC invoice can say USD 600 in January and still become a different economic obligation every day until it is paid. For a network that bills households or businesses in local currency, the relevant cost is not the number printed after the dollar sign. It is the amount of local revenue that must be converted, the bank spread and transfer charge paid to complete the conversion, the delay involved in obtaining foreign currency, and the operational consequence if the full amount does not reach LACNIC on time.

That distinction is easy to lose because the institution's accounts are internally coherent. LACNIC publishes budgets in US dollars. Its audited financial statements use the dollar as the functional currency. Its prices are quoted in dollars. A dollar received from one member is comparable with a dollar received from another. Management can plan payroll, contracts, investments and travel without restating the budget across dozens of currencies.

The member does not inhabit that accounting frame. A Brazilian regional provider collects reais. A Colombian operator collects pesos. A Jamaican or Trinidadian network may have a managed or more stable exchange-rate environment but still uses domestic banking channels. An Argentine operator can face official rates, market rates, capital controls and high inflation at the same time. Networks in Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama operate in dollarised monetary settings and face a different problem again. A single dollar schedule therefore creates formally equal invoices and economically unequal exposures.

This is not an argument that every difference is unfair. Exchange rates also affect routers, optical equipment, international capacity, software licences and cloud services. Many network businesses already manage substantial dollar costs. Nor does a weaker local currency prove that the LACNIC fee is unaffordable. Revenue, prices, wages and inflation may also change. The narrower claim is more defensible: when payment of a compulsory registry fee is tied to continued membership and resource administration, the allocation of currency risk is a governance choice that should be measured and justified.

The published schedule makes the exposure visible

LACNIC's IPv4 fee table for Internet service providers lists three annual schedules. For 2024, the Nano, Micro, Small, Medium and Large categories were USD 600, USD 1,000, USD 2,100, USD 5,700 and USD 14,000. For 2025, they were USD 614, USD 1,024, USD 2,150, USD 5,837 and USD 14,336. For 2026, they are USD 633, USD 1,055, USD 2,215, USD 6,012 and USD 14,766. Larger categories continue upward in steps tied to the aggregate resource holding.

The schedule does more than set a price. It identifies the unit in which risk is allocated. The payment page says payments should be made in US dollars, that the member is responsible for ensuring full payment reaches LACNIC, and that wire-transfer charges must be taken into account. A correspondent-bank chain can therefore add cost on top of the exchange rate. If an intermediary deducts a fee, the member still owes the shortfall.

The timing rules matter as much as the amount. LACNIC sends an ISP renewal invoice in advance of the anniversary date. Its fee page describes a 5% discount for invoices paid before the specified early date and a 5% surcharge after the relevant late point. The payment terms say that after the due-date window a surcharge and resource-recovery sequence can begin, with revocation later in that sequence. End users operate under somewhat different discount and surcharge rules, but they too must renew in dollars.

This converts foreign-exchange timing into registry status. A member may have enough local-currency cash and still fail to obtain dollars, clear compliance checks or complete a cross-border transfer before the deadline. A 5% early discount rewards a well-funded member able to pre-purchase currency. A smaller member waiting for customer receipts may instead buy dollars after a depreciation and then pay a surcharge. The fee schedule is the same; liquidity determines the effective price.

The category mechanism adds another layer. An additional allocation that changes a member's category can trigger a complementary invoice for the remaining months before renewal. The organisation must then fund an unplanned dollar obligation precisely when it is investing in growth. A network expanding because local demand is strong can be exposed to a currency shock that has nothing to do with the quantity or quality of registry work generated by the change.

The 2024 decision linked a regional fee to US inflation

The 2024 Ordinary Member Assembly approved a new adjustment rule. The signed English translation of the minutes records 404 votes in favour, 208 against, 41 abstentions and 60 not cast. From 2025 onward, IPv4 fees are adjusted by the US Consumer Price Index accumulated during the twelve months ending 30 September. LACNIC announces the result in October and applies it on 1 January. The rule also provides that the Board may apply a lower adjustment, or none, in extraordinary circumstances.

Indexation solves a real institutional problem. A price frozen in nominal dollars loses purchasing power when LACNIC's dollar costs rise. Requiring a fresh political contest over every small adjustment can make budgets arbitrary and encourage delayed catch-up increases. A transparent formula gives management, members and auditors a common reference.

But US inflation is not member inflation. The rule protects the dollar purchasing power of the institution while leaving the member's local-currency purchasing power outside the formula. If US prices rise by 3% and a member's currency falls by 15% against the dollar, the local-currency invoice rises by roughly 18.5% before bank charges. If the local currency strengthens, the member can benefit. The rule is symmetrical in arithmetic but not necessarily in capacity: small networks usually have less access to hedging, cheaper credit and foreign-currency reserves than the institution they fund.

The extraordinary-circumstances clause is therefore important and incomplete. It gives the Board discretion to soften an increase, yet it does not publish an objective trigger tied to regional currency dislocation, banking restrictions or a cross-country burden measure. Members cannot know in advance whether a 20%, 40% or 100% depreciation in one economy will count when the rest of the region is stable. The Board also faces a collective-action problem. Suspending an inflation adjustment for everyone may be too broad, while case-by-case relief can become opaque and inconsistent.

The Member Assembly is formally the right body to establish fees. LACNIC's bylaws assign it authority to set membership fees and update procedures, while the Board implements payment terms, discounts, rebates, fines and financing. That division supports a more precise design: the Assembly should approve the risk-allocation principles and objective triggers; the Board should administer relief under those rules and report the outcomes.

A constant-dollar stress test shows divergence, not affordability

The simplest way to isolate exchange-rate exposure is to hold the dollar invoice constant. USD 600 is useful because it was the 2024 Nano ISP fee and remains close to the lowest current annual IPv4 ISP category. The exercise below asks what that unchanged invoice would have represented at the World Bank's annual-average official exchange rates in 2015 and 2024.

Economy 2015 local currency per USD 2024 local currency per USD USD 600 at 2015 rate USD 600 at 2024 rate Change in local-currency equivalent
Argentina 9.23 pesos 914.69 pesos about 5,540 pesos about 548,817 pesos about 9,806%
Brazil 3.33 reais 5.39 reais about 1,996 reais about 3,233 reais about 62%
Chile 654.12 pesos 943.57 pesos about 392,474 pesos about 566,143 pesos about 44%
Colombia 2,741.78 pesos 4,074.43 pesos about 1,645,069 pesos about 2,444,660 pesos about 49%
Mexico 15.85 pesos 18.30 pesos about 9,509 pesos about 10,983 pesos about 16%
Uruguay 27.33 pesos 40.21 pesos about 16,396 pesos about 24,128 pesos about 47%

The underlying series is the World Bank's official exchange-rate indicator, sourced from the IMF's International Financial Statistics. The arithmetic uses annual averages, not the rate on an actual invoice date. It excludes transfer charges, card spreads, taxes, hedging, parallel rates and the early-payment discount. Most importantly, it does not adjust for domestic inflation, changes in operator revenue or the price of connectivity.

Those limits are not footnotes to be overcome; they define what the table can say. It shows that a common dollar amount produced sharply different local-currency paths. It does not rank the six countries by affordability. Mexico's 16% increase does not mean every Mexican network found the fee easy. Argentina's enormous official-rate increase does not mean the real burden rose by precisely the same multiple. Argentina's inflation, monetary reforms, exchange controls and multiple exchange rates make a single official average especially inadequate.

A real member-impact study would use the rate actually available to the payer and compare it with operating revenue or cash flow.

The divergence still matters. LACNIC can calculate it without requesting confidential accounts from every member. It knows the billing country, category, invoice date and payment date. It can pair those records with public reference rates and publish aggregates. That would reveal whether late payment, waiver requests and arrears cluster after currency shocks, while protecting the identity and finances of individual members.

One region contains several monetary systems

“Latin American currency volatility” can itself become a misleading generalisation. The service region contains dollarised economies, hard pegs, managed arrangements, floating currencies, commodity-sensitive currencies and economies with capital controls. Some Caribbean members earn substantial revenue in US dollars through tourism or offshore services. Others collect in small domestic markets while paying many wholesale inputs in dollars. A continental average can therefore conceal the very exposure that policy needs to see.

Dollarised economies face little nominal currency conversion on the fee but can still face banking fees, correspondent access and local liquidity constraints. Economies with stable pegs reduce day-to-day movement but may transmit adjustment through reserves, credit conditions or a later discrete change. Floating currencies can move continuously, allowing a member to choose when to convert but leaving it exposed during the decision period. Controlled systems can show a calm official rate while the usable commercial rate diverges or access to dollars is rationed.

The relevant unit is thus not the country label alone. It is the member's revenue currency, the legally available settlement channel, the timing of the invoice and the cost of delivering the full dollar amount. Two networks in the same country can differ. A multinational carrier may hold dollar balances and hedge routinely. A community provider may collect small local payments and buy dollars only when an invoice arrives. A public institution may have an approved budget but face procurement or central-bank delays. A university may qualify for non-profit relief while a small commercial rural network serving the same households does not.

This heterogeneity argues against both indifference and a universal local-currency price. Indifference leaves the weakest member with unmanaged risk. A universal local-currency price would require LACNIC to choose which currencies to accept, manage conversion and settlement, and decide who absorbs devaluation between billing and receipt. The better starting point is a portfolio of bounded protections matched to observable forms of exposure.

LACNIC's dollar functional currency is evidence of institutional need

The audited 2022 financial statements explain LACNIC's choice directly. They state that management adopted the US dollar as the functional currency because the income stream is denominated in dollars, prices are substantially fixed in dollars regardless of local exchange rates, receivables are substantially collected in dollars, financing is substantially denominated in dollars, and most operating expenses are made in dollars. The same accounts translate non-dollar transactions into the functional currency and recognise exchange differences in income.

That disclosure is stronger than a vague claim that the dollar is convenient. It identifies an economic substance: LACNIC is substantially a dollar institution. Moving the whole fee schedule into a basket of local currencies could create a mismatch on LACNIC's balance sheet. If members paid fixed amounts in depreciating currencies while salaries, suppliers or travel remained dollar-linked, the institution would either cut services, draw reserves or raise nominal local prices later.

The financial statements also show that LACNIC itself is not immune to exchange risk. The organisation holds or incurs some positions in Uruguayan pesos and reports foreign-currency results. It says it does not use hedging instruments to neutralise that exposure. In 2015, the accounts reported a foreign-exchange loss; later years also contain exchange effects. Institutional exposure and member exposure therefore coexist.

Good governance does not require choosing one and ignoring the other. It requires deciding which party can bear which risk at lowest cost without endangering registry continuity. LACNIC is larger than a Nano member, has reserves, diversified membership revenue, professional finance capacity and advance knowledge of the annual fee decision. The institution may be better placed to absorb a bounded regional shock. The member knows its own currency and can decide when to convert.

A sensible policy allocates ordinary movement to the member while creating collective protection against extraordinary movement that would otherwise turn a temporary monetary event into loss of registry standing.

The budget is funded overwhelmingly by the people carrying the risk

LACNIC's published budgets show why fee design cannot be separated from spending design. The 2024 budget expected USD 10.254 million of membership revenue, 95% of operating revenue. The 2025 budget expected USD 10.795 million, 96%. The 2026 budget expects USD 11.248 million, also 96%. Members are not a marginal funding source; they are the institution's economic base.

The budgets also show broad uses of that revenue. The 2026 plan includes salaries and personnel, travel, fixed costs, outreach, professional services, cooperation, training, community projects and depreciation. These activities may have value. They do not all have the same continuity status. Maintaining unique records, registration accuracy, RDAP, reverse DNS and RPKI is different from choosing the scale of travel or outreach.

Currency relief therefore forces a prior question: what amount must be protected? If every planned activity is treated as equally indispensable, the only answer to a revenue shock is to demand the full dollar fee from every member. If core registry obligations are identified separately, a temporary relief facility can be sized against discretionary spending, contingency and reserves without threatening the ledger.

This is where the governance principle of thin coordination has practical force. The registry may charge for reliable uniqueness coordination and associated services. It should not use the importance of those functions to make every institutional ambition non-negotiable. A member facing a currency crisis should be able to see which part of the fee protects the shared record, which part funds wider programmes, and why each component must retain its dollar value.

The claim is not that outreach, training or regional engagement should disappear. It is that optional value should be authorised as optional value rather than bundled behind the threat of losing core registry standing. If members want those programmes, they can fund them. If extraordinary monetary conditions require temporary adjustment, the essential function should have a defined service floor before every wider activity is protected.

Size-based categories do not measure capacity to absorb exchange risk

LACNIC derives an ISP's category from the total IPv4 or IPv6 resources it manages. This is administratively clear and connects larger holdings with larger payments. It does not measure revenue, profit, customer count, debt, country risk or access to dollars.

A larger address holding may belong to a financially strong incumbent. It may also support a low-margin network across difficult geography, a public-sector system or a business carrying historical space that is expensive to renumber. A Nano operator may be young and fragile, or it may be a specialist with high-value customers. Resource size is a defensible billing proxy only if its limits are acknowledged.

Currency volatility amplifies those limits because it is orthogonal to the category. A Medium member and a Nano member in the same country face the same percentage movement in the exchange rate, but not the same absolute cash requirement. A 20% depreciation adds roughly USD 120 worth of local currency to a USD 600 obligation and USD 1,140 worth to a USD 5,700 obligation. Yet the larger member may have cheaper treasury access, while the small member's lower absolute increase can still consume its entire monthly margin.

The category cliff also matters. Moving across a resource threshold can raise the dollar fee independently of the exchange rate. If the currency weakens in the same year, the member experiences a compound jump. The published complementary-invoice rule prorates the category difference, which is better than charging a full new annual fee immediately, but it does not smooth the currency component.

A member-impact statement should therefore accompany each fee change. It should show the number of members in each category, their billing economies, the distribution of exchange-rate changes since the previous invoice, the number receiving early discounts, late surcharges or waivers, and the expected effect of the new dollar amount. Aggregates can preserve confidentiality. Without them, the Assembly votes on institutional revenue while seeing little about incidence.

Payment friction is part of the fee

The official amount understates the member's full cost. A wire may involve the local bank, a correspondent bank and the beneficiary bank. LACNIC warns members to account for transfer charges and treats the amount received as controlling. That is understandable: otherwise the institution would absorb unknown deductions. It also means a small member can pay a higher percentage overhead than a large one because bank charges are often partly fixed.

Credit cards can reduce transfer complexity but introduce issuer limits, foreign-transaction charges, card spreads and compliance controls. In economies with restrictions, a corporate card may not be permitted to settle a foreign membership invoice of the required size. Online payment does not eliminate access to foreign currency; it changes the channel through which access is tested.

Timing compounds the problem. A member that buys dollars early avoids later depreciation but ties up working capital. A member that waits preserves cash but takes market risk. The early discount partially rewards the first strategy, yet its value is fixed at 5%. In a calm year, 5% can exceed the likely currency movement. In a crisis month, the exchange rate can move by more than the discount before a bank transfer clears.

The institution should report delivered-payment cost, not only invoice value. It cannot observe every local bank fee, but it can compare the invoiced amount, amount received, days to settlement, channel, category and country. Member surveys can add anonymised spread and compliance-delay data. The aim is not perfect measurement. It is to stop treating conversion friction as though it happened outside the fee system.

Late payment should not turn a temporary FX shock into irreversible harm

LACNIC's published terms connect non-payment to resource recovery and eventual revocation. A registry must have a credible remedy for persistent non-payment; otherwise compliant members subsidise members who never pay. The danger lies in applying the same sequence to deliberate default and temporary inability to obtain dollars during a documented monetary disruption.

Number resources are operationally embedded. Customers, routes, security entities, reverse DNS, contracts and allowlists may depend on them. A billing dispute or currency delay should not casually be converted into network continuity risk. Preservation of the last verified registration state should be the default while a member uses an approved relief mechanism and continues paying what it reasonably can.

This does not create a free option. Relief should require a dated application, evidence of the qualifying event, continued payment under the approved schedule and automatic expiry. It should pause escalation, not erase the debt unless a separate waiver standard is met. A member that withholds payment despite available channels should remain subject to ordinary recovery.

The distinction is familiar in other infrastructure settings. A utility can offer a payment plan without denying that the bill is due. A lender can reschedule a solvent borrower's currency shock without forgiving principal. A registry can preserve uniqueness and payment discipline without threatening the resource position before a bounded review is complete.

Independent review is important because LACNIC is both creditor and custodian of the record. The initial decision can remain administrative, but a rejected currency-relief request should have a prompt appeal to a body that does not report to the billing team. The appeal should examine eligibility and evidence, not reopen unrelated resource policy.

Existing relief proves flexibility is possible, but leaves a commercial gap

LACNIC already operates differentiated protections. Its fee-waiver procedure allows qualifying non-profit, non-government organisations using limited resources for projects that promote access among disadvantaged communities or vulnerable groups to seek relief. The applicant must explain the project, use of resources and reason it cannot pay. The waiver is time-limited and renewed through a documented request.

That mechanism is valuable and appropriately narrow. It does not cover the ordinary small commercial provider whose margins collapse after devaluation but whose service keeps a town, school, clinic or business district connected. Commercial form is not proof of treasury strength. A provider can be for-profit, socially important and temporarily illiquid at the same time.

The 5% early-payment discount is also a form of price differentiation. It reduces collection risk for LACNIC and rewards members able to settle early. The late surcharge prices delay. These instruments show that a single headline schedule can coexist with conditional adjustments.

What is missing is a published shock rule available on neutral terms. It should not depend on the Board deciding that one member's story is sympathetic. It should depend on measurable conditions such as a currency movement beyond a set corridor, a formal restriction on foreign payments, bank-system interruption or a declared national emergency that materially affects settlement.

The rule should also avoid discriminating against stable economies. Members elsewhere should not be required to fund unlimited relief. The facility needs a cap, duration, reserve source and annual reconciliation. If losses exceed the cap, the Assembly should decide whether to reduce spending, use additional reserves or spread the cost across future years.

A practical currency-risk policy has several layers

No single instrument can address every monetary system in the region. LACNIC could adopt a layered policy.

First, publish an annual currency-incidence report before the fee vote. It would show category counts by broad subregion, exchange-rate movement since the prior billing cycle, late-payment and waiver rates, and a stress test at 10%, 20% and 40% depreciation. It would not disclose member names or private revenue.

Second, define an automatic payment-extension corridor. If an accepted public benchmark shows that a billing currency has depreciated beyond a threshold during the invoice window, affected members could elect a three- or six-month instalment plan. The dollar obligation would remain, but escalation would pause while instalments are current.

Third, permit settlement-rate locking for the smallest categories. A Nano or Micro member that commits before a stated date could lock the local-currency equivalent using a transparent reference rate and pay through an approved local channel. LACNIC or a contracted payment provider would bear only the short conversion interval, not an open-ended currency position.

Fourth, create a capped shock reserve. The reserve would cover conversion differences, payment-provider cost and temporary timing gaps under the policy. Its target should be stated in months of core registry service, not as an unexplained cash sum. Draws and recoveries should be reported annually.

Fifth, separate humanitarian or access waivers from commercial liquidity relief. The existing non-profit waiver can continue to forgive qualifying fees. The commercial facility would reschedule, smooth or partly hedge payment without making a judgment about the worthiness of a business model.

Sixth, place category changes under a no-double-shock rule. When a member moves into a higher category during a qualifying currency event, LACNIC could prorate the resource-related increase as usual but defer the currency-adjustment component or spread it over the remaining and next billing cycles.

Seventh, require a sunset and independent evaluation. A relief tool can create moral hazard or become administratively costly. Every measure should be assessed against defaults prevented, collection delayed, reserve used, member survival, unequal treatment and cost to other members.

Local-currency billing is possible, but not automatically fair

It is tempting to solve the problem by demanding that LACNIC invoice every member in domestic currency. That would move visible exchange risk to the institution, but it would not make the risk disappear. Someone must choose the reference rate, conversion date, spread and treatment of restricted or multiple-rate markets.

If LACNIC fixes a local price for a year, a depreciating currency reduces the dollar value of revenue. If it updates the price daily, the member still carries the risk and gains only a different payment channel. If it uses an official rate that members cannot access, the invoice can become impossible to settle at the stated amount. If it accepts many currencies directly, treasury and compliance costs may consume the benefit.

A regional payment partner or national Internet registry could lower collection cost in some economies, but delegation introduces custody and reconciliation risks. Members need to know when payment is legally complete, who bears bank failure, how refunds work, and whether the intermediary gains influence over membership status. Local collection should be an operational service, not a new gatekeeper.

The better principle is choice under clear allocation. A member may pay dollars directly, lock a reference rate through an approved provider, or use a shock instalment route. LACNIC should disclose the cost and risk of each option. No channel should change voting rights, resource status or service priority for a member that pays according to its terms.

Reserves should smooth shocks, not insulate spending from scrutiny

LACNIC's accounts show substantial accumulated equity and investment assets. Reserves are appropriate for an organisation responsible for continuous registry and security services. They protect against revenue interruption, technical incident, litigation, investment loss and other adverse events.

Currency dislocation across the membership is a legitimate continuity risk because membership revenue supplies almost all operating income. A reserve that protects servers but not the ability of members to remain in good standing addresses only half the dependency. If many small operators cannot settle at once, collection and legitimacy can deteriorate together.

Yet reserves should not become an excuse to avoid fee discipline. A shock facility needs a defined ceiling and replenishment rule. It should not preserve every discretionary programme during a prolonged revenue decline. The order of protection should begin with accurate records, security, publication services, skilled operational staff and member support. Other activity should be reviewed against evidence of value.

The annual budget should therefore include a currency sensitivity note. It should show how a 5%, 10% or 20% shortfall in membership collections would affect the core service floor, which spending could be delayed, and how many months reserves would cover. It should also show LACNIC's own dollar and Uruguayan-peso exposures so that relief is not designed on the false premise that only members face currency risk.

This discipline protects both sides. Members see that relief is affordable and bounded. Management can defend the dollar base needed for continuity. The Assembly decides trade-offs before a crisis rather than improvising after arrears rise.

The metric should be member burden, not nominal fee stability

A fee can remain unchanged in dollars for years while becoming materially more burdensome in one economy and cheaper in another. Conversely, a dollar increase can coincide with a strengthening local currency and produce little local change. Reporting only the schedule therefore says little about incidence.

LACNIC should publish four measures for each major category. The first is the nominal dollar fee. The second is a local-currency index across member billing economies, using transparent public rates. The third is the collection-friction index: median days to pay, short-receipt frequency, payment-channel cost and late surcharge incidence. The fourth is a continuity-risk index: members entering recovery, receiving relief or leaving while holding operationally embedded resources.

None of these measures requires LACNIC to decide whether a provider is profitable. They reveal how the fee performs as an institutional instrument. A rise in late payment after a currency shock is evidence that the allocation of risk may be too rigid. A stable collection record suggests members are managing it. A high early-payment concentration among large members and surcharge concentration among small ones would reveal a liquidity advantage hidden by the uniform price.

The data should be reviewed by the Fiscal Commission and presented before the Assembly votes. The Board should explain any choice not to activate extraordinary relief. Members should be able to propose a rule change with enough notice for analysis rather than facing a binary vote after the budget is committed.

A thin registry fee is easier to defend across unstable currencies

The deeper issue is what membership buys. LACNIC performs functions that running networks need: unique registration, accurate records, reverse-DNS administration, RDAP and WHOIS publication, RPKI and related support. Those functions require money, expertise, secure systems and continuity planning. A call for currency-sensitive fees is not a call for a free registry.

It is a call to keep compulsory cost tied to the narrow coordination duty. The more the fee expands to fund broad institutional activity, the harder it is to justify transferring every exchange-rate shock to members. A network cannot decline the core record while retaining its operating position. That dependence gives the institution a heightened duty to minimise and explain the charge.

Scarcity does not strengthen the case for an unlimited fee. Once IPv4 became scarce and ordinary allocation activity changed, the registry's durable obligations became clearer: protect uniqueness, accuracy, security, transfer records and continuity. Optional services may be worthwhile, but they should not be shielded from member-side economic evidence by the importance of the ledger.

This distinction also protects LACNIC. An institution that publishes a credible core-cost floor, demonstrates efficient spending and cushions extraordinary shocks can defend its fees without claiming that every dollar is beyond question. Members can challenge a programme without threatening registry continuity. The debate moves from loyalty to evidence.

The Assembly should decide who bears the next shock before it arrives

Currency risk is unavoidable. The governance failure would be to leave its allocation implicit. Under the current structure, the ordinary rule is clear in practice: LACNIC invoices in dollars, the member delivers dollars, and the member bears conversion risk and transfer cost. Relief exists for limited cases, and the Board can moderate inflation adjustment under extraordinary circumstances.

That structure should be made explicit and supplemented with thresholds. The Assembly could state that members bear ordinary movements within a published corridor; that LACNIC provides instalment or rate-lock options after a larger movement; that reserves cover a capped temporary shortfall; and that sustained dislocation triggers a fresh budget vote. It could state which exchange-rate source controls, how multiple-rate markets are treated and how decisions can be appealed.

The result would not equalise every economy. No registry fee policy can do that. It would prevent a common administrative charge from becoming a hidden test of access to dollars. It would also give members in stable-currency economies confidence that relief elsewhere is rule-bound rather than political.

LACNIC's dollar accounting can remain. Its essential services can remain funded. Its inflation formula can remain as a baseline. What should end is the assumption that a stable dollar number represents a stable regional burden.

A regional registry does not need to promise exchange-rate neutrality. It does need to show who pays for volatility, why that allocation is efficient, and what happens when ordinary movement becomes an operational threat. The invoice is only the beginning of that account.

Sources and analytical limits

LACNIC's IPv4 ISP fees, end-user IPv4 fees, forms of payment, fee-waiver procedure and billing FAQ establish the published prices, currency, deadlines, discounts, surcharges, recovery consequences and existing relief described here. They do not reveal each member's bank spread, revenue currency, hedging position or ability to obtain dollars.

The 2024 Assembly minutes establish the US-inflation adjustment vote and the Board's extraordinary-circumstances discretion. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 budgets establish the cited membership-revenue and expense plans. Budgeted amounts are not audited actual results.

The audited 2015 annual report and 2022 financial statements support the accounting-currency and exchange-risk discussion. The 2022 statements explain management's functional-currency choice; that choice does not by itself determine the fairest allocation of member-side currency risk.

The exchange-rate table uses the World Bank PA.NUS.FCRF official annual-average series, whose source is IMF International Financial Statistics. It is a controlled constant-invoice illustration, not an affordability index. It does not use actual invoice dates, parallel-market rates, real revenue, domestic inflation, bank charges or purchasing-power adjustments. No conclusion is drawn about an individual member's solvency, profitability or compliance.