REGISTRY OPERATOR’S PROPOSAL

CentralNic Ltd

I. GENERAL INFORMATION

D8.      Registry operator's total revenue in the last-ended fiscal year: $1,176,567[1]

Dr Rob Blokzijl (Chairman of RIPE, member of ICANN Board[2])

Dr Willie Black (Head of Nominet UK)

(ii) Other officers:

Simon Joel Rowbottom (Chief Technical Officer)

Laszlo Hasenau (Director Elect, East Europe Operations)

Anil Patel (Company Secretary)

Diana Loveday Dyer (Assistant Secretary)

(iii) All relevant managers:

            Camilla Jane Coxe (Operations Manager)

            Susan Lusia Malec (Sales and Marketing Manager)

            Peter Noel David Corlett (Technical Operations Manager)

            James Adam Samuel (Global Network Operation Manager)

(iv) Persons or entities owning five percent or more of registry operator:

            Stephen Gerard Crispin Dyer

            Diana Loveday Dyer

            Theresia Hasenau

            Cathy Bosworth Horton

            Christian Philips

            Robert Pooke

In the early days of the UK Internet, NomiNation, the first private Internet Registry Company, was launched to handle the domain name uk.com.

The idea came about as a direct result of conversations between the late Jon Postel ("Father of the Internet") and Stephen Dyer (Chairman of NomiNation) in 1995. Jon suggested the use of uk.com to compete with co.uk at a time when the proposed price of the co.uk name was £200 (about $300 US).

Subsequently, with the launch of the uk.com domain name, co.uk was offered at £80 and Nominet, the co.uk registry, did not hold a monopoly position. The two domain names continue to function in harmony, and the addition of uk.net, gb.net and gb.com provides the UK Internet community with the widest choice of local domain names.

Around the world, the Internet is experiencing phenomenal growth and this results in a scarcity of suitable domain names. The provision of a global domain name registry is a valuable service to organisations and individuals who want to have a presence in different countries but experience difficulty in registering a domain name because of local qualifying rules.

CentralNic offers an efficient and speedy registration service in a number of countries around the world and further countries will be added to the portfolio. Its world-wide network of resellers provides efficient local access for registration and assistance for registrants.

D13.1.4. Registry/database/Internet related experience and activities.

Stephen Dyer and Joel Rowbottom are both directors of Mailbox Internet as well as CentralNic.

Mailbox Internet is a fully functional Internet Service Provider. It has a reputation for being a technically advanced ISP which has developed NEWTOS, a database system enabling complete Web-based automation of ISP operations.

Although a separate company, Mailbox Internet is one of the connectivity providers for CentralNic and its co-location with CentralNic provides a useful buffer of technology and expertise to help cope with the highly unpredictable volumes encountered in the domain name environment.

CentralNic is in negotiation to acquire an existing registry of the .com, .net and .org names.

D13.1.5. Mission.

CentralNic’s mission is to become a globally recognised supplier of domain names and a major registrar of the existing standard global domain names. CentralNic aims to be recognised as a international brand for quality, security and confidence and a recognised centre of excellence.

CentralNic is able to call upon the considerable expertise of its director Cathy Horton at Squire, Sanders and Dempsey, to assist with any legal, regulatory or governance matter that may arise out of the operation of the registry.

CentralNic intends to become a major player in the fields of Domain Name Law and Internet Governance.

D13.1.6. Management.

Stephen Dyer

Stephen Dyer, co-founder, chairman and managing director, is an entrepreneur, Internet pioneer and systems designer whose 30-year career has spanned a broad range of industries from banking to airlines to scientific research.

Dyer co-founded CentralNic in April 2000 with the vision of building an independent global domain registry and marketing company that will make it easier and less expensive for Internet users to establish new and distinctive domain names with regional and country-specific identities. CentralNic is a successor organisation to NomiNation, which Dyer founded five years earlier, in 1995.

In addition to CentralNic, Dyer is currently chairman of two other successful companies. In the early 1980s, he and his wife Diney, founded Mailbox Partnership, a fulfillment house providing creative, back office and other services to public relations companies, and in 1993 he formed Mailbox Internet Ltd., one of the first and most profitable business-to-business Internet Service Providers in the UK.

Prior to these positions, Dyer served as Manager of Organisation and Methods for Rediffusion Group, a 108-company multinational conglomerate comprised of electronic media, financial services, computer manufacturing, flight simulation and other groups. As manager of O&M, Dyer ran Rediffusion's internal consulting organisation, with responsibilities that included integrating customer support and other customer needs with the company's computer systems across all groups.

As a consultant, Dyer's experience in systems design and implementation covers many industries. For example, he performed systems analysis and programming for the first global online ticket reservation and cargo scheduling system for BOAC, the predecessor to British Airways, and later provided systems advice for the merger of BOAC and BEA when British Airways was formed in the early 1970s.

Dyer also designed and implemented systems for on-line analysis of human brainwaves for the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, UK. Other engagements included design and implementation of computerised banking and accounting systems for the Bank of Greece, and systems design for car control and rental billing systems for Hertz Rent-a-Car.

As a pioneer in the Internet industry, Dyer is a well-known figure and participant at meetings of ICANN, RIPE and other industry groups. Dyer also volunteers on working groups for the Council of European Top Level Domain Name Registries, the Policy Advisory Board of Nominet UK and the Private Registries Working Group, which he founded.

Dyer began his career as a consultant at Arthur Andersen, after studying computer science, psychology and chemistry at Keele University. Dyer is married and has two sons, the oldest of whom runs his own media design company, Spook New Media.

Joel Rowbottom

Joel Rowbottom, 26, Chief Technical Officer, is a computer expert and a published Linux author who can write code in 15 dialects of 10 programming languages. He specialises in database design and implementation on PC and Unix development platforms.

As CTO for CentralNic, Rowbottom is responsible for implementing and ensuring the flawless reliability of the company's Internet Domain Name Registry, which is capable of accepting more than 3,000 new registrations a minute.

In addition to his role as CTO for CentralNic, Rowbottom is Managing Director and former Technical Director for Mailbox Internet Ltd., one of the first and most profitable business-to-business Internet Service Providers in the United Kingdom.

Rowbottom, began programming computers at age 8 and at age 9 wrote his first computer game entitled "Invasion" which he sold to game publisher Gold. At age 12, he sold software applications and utilities that he wrote to fellow grammar school students, and by 17 was programming for Coca-Cola and Schweppes Beverages, Ltd..

He holds a BSc degree in Special Computer Science with Information Engineering from the University of Hull, and has numerous professional qualifications including Cisco CCIE, and Microsoft CSE. He is a registered Sun Solaris and Java developer and a registered Oracle8i developer.

Rowbottom is co-author of Professional Linux Deployment (Wrox Press, 1999), and is currently working on a second Linux book. He has also published articles for several Linux publications including LinuxUser and LinuxFormat.

In addition, he is a member of a working group with CENTR (Council of European Top-Level Domain Registries) and RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) that aims to create an industry-wide XML template for registering domain names. He also works with several other groups on IPv6, the next-generation Internet Protocol.

Through his published work and participation in various Internet forums, Rowbottom is well-known throughout the UK's Internet community, and he has been written about in several national British newspapers.

Prior to CentralNic, Rowbottom was a software engineer for Gemstar Europe where he provided software support and programming for publishing clients throughout Europe, frequently using C for Unix and DOS-based machines, and ThinkC and CodeWarrior for Apple machines. He also had sole responsibility for analysis, design and installation of in-house client-server databases using Visual Basic, Microsoft Access and MySQL. He worked on the European implementation of the digital TV system, StarSight EPG, and was one of only eight qualified OpenTV programmers in the UK.

Before Gemstar, Rowbottom was a Webmaster and programmer for Rabbit Solutions, where he designed Web sites for companies throughout the UK, and developed application software for small businesses using C, Visual Basic, and Pascal. He was also responsible for marketing and operations.

In addition to his love of computers, Rowbottom is a jazz and pop pianist, and performs with seven other musicians in a band called "Obvious Pseudonym."

He is married, and lives in London.

Cathy Horton

Cathy B. Horton, Legal Counsel and one of CentralNic’s Founding Directors, is an international M&A attorney and business consultant with extensive experience in d