Heather... WEBT is one of the chosen web registrars.
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NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- America Online Inc. and France Telecom SA are
among the first crop of firms authorized to compete with Network
Solutions Inc., which has had a monopoly in the lucrative business of
registering domain names in Internet addresses.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a
government-appointed overseer, Wednesday named the first five companies
that will compete with Network Solutions. America Online (AOL); CORE, an
acronym for the International Council of Registrars, a nonprofit
international association; France Telecom's (FTE) Oleane Internet unit;
Melbourne IT, an Australian company; and New York-based Forman
Interactive Corp.; were named.
The task of registering the names of millions of sites ending with
.com, .net and .org, called "domain names," has been done by Network
Solutions (NSOL) under a contract with the federal government since
1993. The hope is that competition will bring down the cost of
registering a name, now $35 a year, as well as further decentralize the
process to answer international concerns.
Overseeing the competition is the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers, or ICANN. The international nonprofit corporation was
formed by the Commerce Department last year to oversee
technical-management issues.
Robert Kahn, one of the early pioneers of the Internet, said
competition could save site operators money if the price is brought
closer to real costs, estimated at $15 or less.
It is anticipated that some competitors will use domain-name
registration as a loss leader to sell other services, such as Web-site
design, Web hosting, advertising or legal services. Network Solutions
will still operate the database where the names are registered, but will
compete with the five new companies for the job of putting new site
names in the database.
However, Kahn isn't confident that competition will necessarily bring
more sophistication to the Internet site identification system itself.
In testimony before Congress, Kahn compared the domain name system to
"traveling on horseback."
If competition appears to work, ICANN plans to open up domain
registration to other firms. However, ICANN is taking a cautious
approach to protect what it calls the "stability and integrity" of the
Internet.
The five companies will pay Network Solutions $9 per year for each
name submitted to the central registry during the initial testing of
software designed to allow competitors to register names. However, ICANN
is still working with the company to arrive at a final price.
The test period is scheduled to continue until June 26. If all goes
well, the market will be opened to the 29 other competitors already
certified by ICANN. Those competitors include 17 U.S. companies:
9NetAvenue, Alldomains.com, All West Communications, American Domain
Name Registry, AT&T Corp. (T), DomainRegistry.com, eNom Inc.,
InfoAvenue, InfoNetworks, InfoRamp, Interactive Telecom, MS Intergate,
NameSecure.com, Name.Space Inc., RCN Corp. (RCNC), Verio Inc. (VRIO),
and Web Trends.
Three Canadian firms also would compete - A Technology Co., Domain
Direct, and Internet Domain Registers - as well as three from the United
Kingdom - NetBenefit, NetNames, and Virtual Internet.
The group of 29 also includes Norway's Active ISP, Spain's
Interdomain, Japan's interQInc, Sweden's Port Information System AB,
Catalonia's Nominalia and Denmark's Telepartner AS (TPARY).
ICANN also is working on a structure for the body that will
ultimately recommend how and when to add new top-level domains to
accommodate demand for new Internet addresses. The creation of ICANN and
just about everything it has proposed has stirred opposition and
controversy around the globe. International complaints about Network
Solutions's lucrative monopoly led the U.S. to create ICANN and to
transfer administration of the Internet.
Domain names act as the routing service for cyberspace; without
consensus on assigning the addresses among the thousands of computer
networks that make up the Internet, electronic mail wouldn't be
delivered and requests for Web pages would go unanswered.
Copyright (c) 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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