The number of accredited domain name registrars permitted to compete with Network Solutions Inc is now up to 57, with the addition of 15 more companies earlier this week. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) issues the accreditation to companies that meet its minimum set of requirements. Five of them are permitted to participate in the test phase, which now ends on July 16, following recent extensions. The others are permitted to enter the market after that. They are mostly small companies this time, but the list does include some big players, including Concentric Network Corp and PSINet Inc. Nine of the companies are in the US, with one each in France, Germany, Israel, Japan Kuwait and the UK. The list is at http://www.icann.org.
