By Nick Patience
Talks between Network Solutions Inc and the Department of Commerce don’t look like getting very far until at least the first week in September for the simple reason that most of the Commerce officials are on vacation. With Becky Burr and Commerce general counsel Andrew Pincus both on vacation until around the end of this month, talks have been postponed until their return. That does not leave a great deal of time until the next deadline, which is the September 11 end-date of the testing the early competition phase of the shared registration system developed by NSI. New domain name registrars are using the SRS to register domain names and have them included in the registry database maintained by NSI.
The September 11 deadline is the third agreed by the two parties, having pushed it back from the original end of the 60-day testbed period on June 24. It was later extended to July 16 and then again through August 6. A further extension is now likely because any major amendment to NSI’s cooperative agreement (there have been 13 amendments to it so far) will likely necessitate a public comment period of two to three weeks, which will push the testbed phase into October. The latest agreement, however, allows for any ICANN-accredited registrar to participate in the test phase, rather than just the original five, so from a competitive standpoint an extension is not that important. But while it is classified as a testbed, NSI can put off formally recognizing ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which is the subplot to all this.
However, it looks as if NSI is ready to recognize ICANN at this stage, but will ask for an extension of its contract to run the .com, .net and .org registry, which currently expires on September 30 2000. Word that NSI was seeking some sort of registry agreement with ICANN came recently from BancBoston Robertson Stephens’ new NSI-watcher, Stephen Birer, who floated the idea in a research note late last week. Birer claimed that NSI was going to get an agreement through 2004. NSI sources have confirmed that the company is seeking such an agreement, but we believe the government would be very reluctant to grant NSI and exclusive registry deal for that length of time.
ICANN will most likely be responsible for the contractual agreements to run the registry because ICANN was set up to take over the administration of the DNS from Commerce. Some on the ICANN board, most noticeably president Mike Roberts, have expressed a desire for a non-profit registry, while others have expressed other views. NSI officials are still happy with the progress of talks thus far and point out that despite the short time left in which to negotiate a settlement, each side knows the other pretty well by now.
