By Nick Patience
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has finally opened up the domain name registration market to an initial two-month test period, but in doing so has actually opened it up to a much greater number of companies than previously thought. The five new registrars are due to start registering names themselves on Monday, April 26, though some of them may not be completely ready on the day, such has been the speed at which this process has evolved. The five companies are America Online Inc, France Telecom SA’s Oleane division and Register.com – all of which we flagged yesterday – plus Melbourne IT, the largest country-code domain name registrar in Asia- Pacific and the Internet Council of Registrars (CORE). It is the last of these that may prove controversial.
From 1993 until now, Network Solutions Inc (NSI) has had control of both the domain name registration market in the .com, .net and .org name spaces, as well as control of the database of domain names, known as the registry. NSI will retain control of the registry until its current cooperative agreement with the Department of Commerce expires on September 30 2000. In order to facilitate competition, NSI has developed a shared registration system (SRS) for the new registrars to use to add names to the database, while maintaining data integrity and the stability of the internet’s addressing system.
The choice by the ICANN board of CORE as one of the five initial registrars is likely to prove controversial because it is actually a collective of 90 registrars from 23 countries, which was originally set up as a registry to administer seven new top- level domains. These domains have not been entered into the internet root server system because of widespread disagreements over the last two years. CORE executive chairman Ken Stubbs said 20 to 30 of its registrars would be participating, which would mean 25 to 35 companies in the test phase, rather than the expected five. However, ICANN president Mike Roberts, speaking to us later in the day, said CORE has assured ICANN that it will present a single face to NSI’s SRS software. Its registrars will feed information into another SRS on a server in Germany, which will then pass the information on to NSI in Herndon, Virginia.
The US Department of Commerce has negotiated short-term agreement with NSI that will see the new registrars pay NSI $9 per year for each name they register. NSI had been looking for about $16 per name. But the fee for the post-test period has not been finalized yet and could be different, depending on how the test period pans out. The figure will be set shortly following further talks between the DoC and NSI, and NSI did not want to speculate as to whether the figure will be higher or lower. In addition, each of the five registrars must pay NSI a one-time $10,000 license fee for SRS software. Previously, NSI resellers had to pay it $70 per name per year and then add anything they could make on top, so the room for profit margins has been increased greatly with this agreement.
ICANN also announced the names of 29 additional companies that have been accredited to become registrars, which will be able to start business after the test period in completed at the end of June. Some of them are old internet hands such as Name.Space Inc and NetNames Ltd; while others are large telcos such as AT&T Corp and ISPs and web hosting firms such as Verio Inc and RCN Corp.
Speaking at yesterday’s press conference in Washington DC, ICANN president Mike Roberts said the five were chosen because they submitted an outstanding set of applications. The exact content of those applications contain trade secrets and so will not be released to the public. Roberts says they are exceptionally well-qualified in the technical and financial aspects of the business and represent the geographical diversity ICANN was looking for. Rich Forman, president of Register.com alluding to the expected frosty relationships between NSI and the five registrars, sa
id he wanted to speak directly to NSI executives and employees and ask for their cooperation. This would appear slightly over-dramatic as NSI was present at the press conference.
Although ICANN has already put the names of all the registrars on its web site, few outside the internet community will know to look there for them, so it is up to the companies themselves to publicize themselves and get their name out there. Although these five would appear to be getting a jump-start on the market, ICANN chairman Esther Dyson said they’re not actually the lucky ones as there is likely to be a few hiccups in those first few weeks of competition – both technical and operational.
Roberts hinted that an agreement would be struck soon between the DoC and NSI about some sort of reinstatement of the InterNic registry web site, which was redirected to a new NSI site a few weeks ago. He said he expects NSI and the DoC to come up with a clearer resolution of that very shortly. NSI told us later that any such discussion would be separate from the talks about the fees and no date has been set for such discussions. The registrars spent the rest of the day meeting with ICANN officials to clarify technical and operational issues and will meet with NSI on Friday to go over the interaction of their systems with the SRS.
With tongue firmly in cheek, Dyson described yesterday’s announcement described it as a few small steps for three domains and one giant leap for domain-kind. Bill Burrington, the director of law and global public policy and associate general counsel at AOL summed up the feelings of many when he said we don’t know where this is all going…it’s so early in this game; who knows how this is going to play out. Who indeed, Bill. http://www.icann.org
