ICANN Receives Five Applications to Operate .NET
19 January 2005
ICANN today announced that in response to a request for proposals (RFP), it has received five applications to operate the .NET Top-Level Domain for a term no less than six years. The current .NET Registry Agreement between ICANN and VeriSign, Inc. was signed in May 2001 and will expire on 30 June 2005. VeriSign is eligible to be considered for designation as the successor registry operator.
The procedure for selecting the successor registry operator was developed through an open and transparent process incorporating opportunities for public review and comment at multiple stages. The criteria for evaluation were posted with the RFP, see http://www.icann.org/tlds/dotnet-reassignment/net-rfp-final-10dec04.pdf. The final procedure was approved by ICANN's Board of Directors on 29 June 2004 and is a continuation of the process of bringing competition to the legacy gTLDs.
Proposals were received from (in alphabetical order):
|
Organization
|
URL
|
| Afilias Limited | www.afilias.info |
| CORE++ Asociación sin ánimo de lucro | www.core-plusplus.net |
| DENIC Domain Verwaltungs – und Betriebsgesellschaft eG | www.denic.de/en/ |
| Sentan Registry Services, Inc. | www.sentanregistry.net |
| VeriSign, Inc. | www.verisign.com |
The non-confidential portions of the proposals will be posted shortly on the ICANN website. The applications will be evaluated by an independent firm retained specifically for the purpose. A final report, including public comment, will be provided to the ICANN Board of Directors in time to make a selection in March 2005.
Direct press inquiries to press@icann.org.
