Costs to obtain and fulfill a contract

Deferred costs of fulfillment

Deferred costs to fulfill contracts generally consist of domain registration costs which have been paid to a domain registry, and are capitalized as Prepaid domain name registry and ancillary services fees. These costs are deferred and amortized over the life of the domain which generally ranges from

one

ten

years. For the

nine

months ended

September 30, 2019,

the Company capitalized

$122.5

million and also amortized

$126.3

million of contract costs, respectively. We also acquired

$10.3

million of prepaid domain name registry and ancillary service fees in the Ascio acquisition, which took place on

March 18, 2019.

Amortization of contract fulfillment costs is primarily included in cost of revenue. The breakdown of the movement in the prepaid domain name registry and ancillary services fees balance for the

nine

months ended

September 30, 2019

is as follows (Dollar amounts in thousands of U.S. dollars).

Prepaid domain name registry and ancillary services fees

	Nine months ended September 30, 2019
Balance, beginning of period	$	106,527
Acquired in a business combination 1		10,318
Capitalization of costs		122,534
Amortization of costs		(126,288	)
Balance, end of period	$	113,091

The Company acquired Ascio on

March 18, 2019.

As part of the transition, the Company acquired active domain name contracts with a terms ranging from

years, for which fees to suppliers were paid in advance.