Nonprofit overseer gives NSI competition; dozens more registries are in the wings.

by Margret Johnston, IDG News Service
April 21, 1999, 1:56 p.m. PT

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Five new entities will be able to register Internet domain names, at least during a test phase of a new competitive system.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit organization overseeing the new procedure, chose America Online, the Internet Council of Registrars, France Telecom SA's Oléane subsidiary, Melbourne Information Technologies Australia, and Register.com to participate in the test as accredited registrars.

The companies will test the shared system, which is designed to introduce competition into the registration of the top-level domains of .com, .net, and .org, in a two-month trial beginning April 26, ICANN officials say.

"The five, while being honored and recognized today, are not actually the lucky ones," said Esther Dyson, interim director of ICANN. They are part of a learning process, she said.

After the test, Network Solutions Incorporated, which until now has managed domain name registration exclusively under a U.S. government contract, must grant equal access to registry services to all accredited registrars. At least 25 more accredited registrars are expected to begin offering registration services at the end of June, says Michael Roberts, interim president and chief executive of ICANN.

Cheap Registration, for Now

Negotiators from the U.S. Commerce Department and NSI agreed that the cost of registering a domain name will be $9 per annual registration, Roberts said. But this is an interim price and negotiations will continue.

Officials say selecting the five organizations was a major step in releasing NSI's monopoly.

"There's no reason the [registration service] should be a monopoly, and it should not be stuck in the United States," Dyson says, adding that ICANN's goal remains to set policies so the marketplace can do the work.

"There's an interesting marketplace there," she said. "If imaginations run loose you are going to find interesting services built around domain names."

ICANN, created last year, is a nonprofit organization funded by donations from Internet service providers and information technology and telecommunications companies, including IBM, America Online, Compaq, Microsoft, PSINet, France Telecom, and UUNet Technologies.

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