By using a reasonable yet conservative volume and resulting fees of $220k, it allows the community to move forward in an expedient manner without spending further cycles on the price, and being no further ahead in determining the expected volume. More transparency would allow the IRT and the wider community to support ICANN org more effectively, and was echoed frequently in the Final Report and the PDP meetings.

Just to drill a bit on what is in the Final Report:

"The development of the application fee must be fully transparent with all cost assumptions explained and documented.”

It doesn’t give room to have less transparency because of any reason, including the mentioned issue of vendor negotiations leverage or any other reason for that matter.

AFAIK, this output was adopted unchanged by the ICANN Board.

Rubens