Organizations that own .org domains may soon find themselves paying a bit more to renew, transfer, and register new domains. The company that operates the .org domain, Public Interest Registry (PIR), has decided to raise wholesale rates from $6.15 to $6.75 per domain this year—a 10 percent fee increase, following last year's 2.5 percent increase. Of course, smaller registrars that buy wholesale domains won't want to eat that fee themselves, meaning that they will likely pass on the increase to customers.

PIR informed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of its plans in a letter (PDF) sent earlier this month. No reason was given in the letter for the rate increase, but it stands to reason that since other domain operators have raised fees (like VeriSign for .com and .net domains), that PIR doesn't want to be left out when it could make more money.

The increase will go into effect on November 9, giving those who own or want .org domains another six months to take advantage of the current price. Although the 60¢ may not matter much to individual customers, groups that operate multiple domains might feel a little more pain in their wallets—especially nonprofits and small organizations that .org was once limited to.

PIR doesn't require ICANN's approval in order to raise rates, but it is limited by ICANN on how much it can raise them per year. According to ICANN's registry agreement for .org domains, service fees cannot be increased by more than 1.1 times the previous year's max service fees. The original agreement started out in 2006 at $6 per domain, meaning that 2007's maximum service fees would have been $6.60, and 2008's maximum is $7.26. It looks like PIR has a ways to go before hitting the ceiling for this year, unlike its greedier counterpart VeriSign, which has raised the prices for .com and .net the maximum allowable each year under its agreement with ICANN.