Summary

  • LACNIC’s 2020 announcement says a six-year IPv6-only fee transition would begin at USD 800 and reach USD 2,100 when the measure concluded in 2026. That announcement remains publicly available.
  • The Board changed the route. A 2021 adjustment held the fee at USD 800 for two additional years; a unanimous 1 October 2023 resolution set USD 1,200 for 2026 and moved the USD 2,100 endpoint to 2029.
  • The revised amount is not hidden: the 2024 minutes reproduce the table, say invoices show the actual fee and discount, and the current fee page carries the new schedule. The gap is a missing, conspicuous join from the old notice to the controlling version.
  • A compact supersession register should bind each schedule to its authority, effective years, base fee, discount, payable amount, inflation rule, notice, invoice treatment and the version it replaces.

A deadline can remain visible after it stops controlling

On 26 November 2020, LACNIC announced a temporary measure for new members receiving only a /32 of IPv6 space. The fee would start at USD 800 and rise progressively until it reached USD 2,100 when the six-year transition concluded in 2026. The Board described the waiver as a way to help smaller members obtain IPv6 space while protecting LACNIC’s long-term financial stability. It also identified the measure as an exercise of the Board’s powers under the bylaws. LACNIC’s 2020 announcement

Read as a dated announcement, the page is clear. Read as a current price instruction in 2026, it is no longer complete. LACNIC later slowed the withdrawal of the discount. The payable amount for 2026 is USD 1,200 under the replacement schedule, and the full USD 2,100 step now belongs to 2029.

There is nothing inherently improper about that change. A discount is meant to be revisited when adoption, entry costs and financial conditions change. The Board discussed those considerations and acted through a recorded resolution. The problem is not that the institution changed its mind. It is that a durable public page can continue to state the old destination without telling a reader, at the point of use, which later decision displaced it.

That distinction matters because archived policy is not the same as stale policy. The 2020 notice should remain reachable. It proves what LACNIC announced at that time and why. Deleting or silently rewriting it would damage the historical record. But preserving history does not require making readers reconstruct supersession from meeting PDFs.

The schedule changed in two discernible steps

The first visible adjustment appears in LACNIC’s summary of its 2021 Board activities. The Board kept Small IPv6-only membership at USD 800 in 2022 and 2023, rather than moving to USD 1,000 and USD 1,200. Its table left the later path unchanged: USD 1,450 in 2024, USD 1,750 in 2025 and USD 2,100 in 2026. The summary says the proposal was approved unanimously and would receive formal, detailed communication. 2021 Board activities summary

The stated rationale was specific. A new ISP requesting only IPv6 and an ASN would face a combined entry cost of USD 1,300 for the next two years instead of USD 2,000 and USD 2,200. The Board said this would help new members obtain number resources and support IPv6 adoption without a negative long-term financial effect on LACNIC. Those are the institution’s reasons, not proof that the discount caused deployment or that no other cost constrained an operator.

The decisive replacement came on 1 October 2023. The minutes record several competing views: hold at USD 800; move to USD 1,000; resume the original progression; shift the curve to avoid a sharp increase; or attach adjustments to inflation. They also preserve a useful boundary of authority. One director stated that fees are within the Assembly’s power, while discounts are within the Board’s power.

The resulting resolution was unanimous. It maintained discount levels higher than those set in the 29 November 2021 resolution and fixed the payment, discount included, at USD 900 in 2024, USD 1,000 in 2025, USD 1,200 in 2026, USD 1,450 in 2027, USD 1,750 in 2028 and USD 2,100 in 2029. It required the invoice to detail the value of the discount. 1 October 2023 Board minutes

The 2026 difference is therefore USD 900 relative to the earlier path. It is not a discrepancy that can be resolved by choosing which number looks more recent. The 2023 resolution supplies the decision, authority and sequence that make USD 1,200 the approved discounted amount.

LACNIC already publishes much of the answer

The strongest case against treating this as an opacity story is found in LACNIC’s own later record. In October 2024, the Board reproduced both columns: the previously planned fee and the schedule approved in 2023. The 2026 row places USD 2,100 beside USD 1,200. Participants asked whether users knew the table. The minutes say they did; LACNIC communicated the actual amount and declining discount in invoices, and fee information was available on the website. An explanatory email was suggested. Because the schedule had not changed since October 2023, the item was classified as informational rather than resolutive. October 2024 Board minutes

The current Spanish ISP IPv6 fee page carries the same comparison and says the Board’s October 2023 review increased the fee more slowly, extending the scheme through 2029. It also sets out renewal, early-payment, surcharge and possible revocation terms. A member who begins on that page can see the current schedule. Current ISP IPv6 fee table

This is important evidence of disclosure. It means the responsible conclusion is not “LACNIC charged the wrong amount,” “members were misled,” or “the discount was secret.” No sample invoice was examined for this article, and no member outcome is established. The public record instead reveals a navigation and provenance problem: the current answer exists, but the old official answer does not visibly carry its replacement with it.

The distinction can affect more than casual readers. A procurement team may cite the older endpoint in a budget model. A researcher may compare regional fee policies from pages collected at different times. An operator may copy the historical language into an internal plan. A journalist may treat two official numbers as a contradiction. Each can repair the error by finding the later record, but each bears a reconstruction cost that the institution could remove with one explicit link.

Inflation has its own authority and clock

The version chain becomes more important when inflation is added. At the 2024 Ordinary Members Assembly, members approved annual adjustments based on US Consumer Price Index inflation over the twelve months through 30 September. The rule applies to IPv4 categories from January 2025, but to IPv6 categories only after the IPv6-only waiver ends, scheduled for 2030. It excludes ASNs and lets the Board reduce or omit an adjustment in extraordinary circumstances. The vote was 404 in favour, 208 against, 41 abstentions and 60 votes not cast. 2024 Assembly minutes

The November 2025 Board minutes place two statements together. They say US inflation was 3%, members had been informed and 2026 invoices include the adjustment. They then say that the established schedule makes USD 1,200 the 2026 IPv6-only fee. Directors discussed continuing the planned phase-out and watching returns if any occurred. November 2025 Board minutes

Those sentences do not authorise a reader to multiply USD 1,200 by 1.03 and invent a USD 1,236 invoice. The Assembly record postpones IPv6 inflation until the waiver ends, and the current table displays USD 1,200. The minutes do not include a sample IPv6-only invoice or spell out which categories the broad invoice sentence covers. The safe statement is narrower: the public documents establish the scheduled discounted amount and a separate inflation rule, but a version register should make their applicability explicit for each billing cycle.

This is precisely where prose history becomes fragile. “The waiver ends in 2030” may refer to the first inflation year, while the table reaches the undiscounted USD 2,100 in 2029. That can be coherent if 2029 is the last discounted-schedule year and 2030 the first CPI-adjusted cycle. It should be expressed as fields, not left to a reader’s calendar arithmetic.

The missing artifact is a supersession register

LACNIC does not need a new pricing authority or a public database of member invoices. It needs a small record that separates the things it already controls.

Each row should name a schedule identifier and version, approving body, decision date, effective start and end, category and resource eligibility, base fee, discount, payable amount, CPI applicability and first affected cycle. It should link the resolution, current fee page and member notice, record how the discount appears on the invoice, and state whether the row is current, scheduled, superseded or corrected. A replaces field should point directly to the prior version.

The current page should be the reader-facing projection of that register. The 2020 notice should retain its original text and gain a dated banner: this schedule was superseded, with a link to the controlling version. Meeting minutes remain the evidence of deliberation and authority; the register does not replace them. It provides the join that lets an old statement remain historically true without appearing operationally current.

No member identities belong in this artifact. There is no need to publish who received the discount, what any organisation paid, whether a return occurred or how an individual account was handled. Schedule provenance is institutional metadata. It can be public without exposing a single case.

The result would be modest but useful. A member could identify the controlling amount before an invoice arrives. An auditor could trace a billing rule to the right authority. A researcher could compare fee paths without scraping contradictory pages. LACNIC could change the discount again without erasing the reasons and effective boundaries of the last change.

The lesson is not that institutions should never revise a transition. The opposite is true: a transition that cannot respond to evidence becomes a ritual. Revision becomes trustworthy when the replacement travels with the record it displaced.

Sources

  1. LACNIC Board announcement on IPv6-only fees, 26 November 2020
  2. LACNIC announcement-list copy of the 2020 decision
  3. LACNIC 2021 Board activities summary
  4. LACNIC Board minutes, 1 October 2023
  5. LACNIC Board minutes, October 2024
  6. LACNIC Ordinary Members Assembly minutes, 2024
  7. LACNIC Board minutes, November 2025
  8. LACNIC current ISP IPv6 fee table
  9. LACNIC fee-waiver procedure