The .Net Race Is On

January 2005

Officials at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) expect to announce early next week the name of the third-party evaluators who will decide which registry is best suited to assume management of the .net domain extension.

Kieran Baker, an ICANN spokesman, said the announcement could be made as early as Monday, setting into motion the organization's timetable to end evaluations by March 9.

Officials at the organization have spent the past couple of weeks going over the applications sent by five bidders to make sure there were no conflict-of-interest issues between those five and the would-be evaluators.

ICANN plans to announce the new .net registry at its board meeting in March. Its registry agreement with the current registry, VeriSign , ends June 30.

With the bids now out in public, five registries have the task of showing the independent review board -- through their applications -- that they should be entrusted with managing the third-largest domain extension on the Internet. To the four losers will go a $150,000 refund for their $200,000 application fee; the winner will take control of one of the most visible and important domain extensions.