[registrars] ICANN Board Designates VeriSign to Retain Control of .NET Registry

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-08jun05.htm 

ICANN Board Designates VeriSign to Retain Control of .NET Registry

8 June 2005

Marina del Rey, CA - 8 June 2005 - ICANN's Board has named VeriSign,
Inc. as the designated .NET successor registry. ICANN has also approved
entering into a new agreement with VeriSign for their continued
management of the .NET registry for six additional years. This
announcement is the culmination of the .NET RFP and successor registry
process that began on 6 March 2004 and included an independent
evaluation of VeriSign and four other applicants. 

In taking this action ICANN's Board considered the entire RFP Process,
an independent evaluator's report, Internet community comments and the
terms of the new agreement. 

ICANN hired Telcordia Technologies, Inc. (an independent third party) to
conduct the evaluation of the applications and the qualifications of the
applicants. In April, Telcordia declared that all five applicants were
capable of running the registry for .NET but gave the highest ranking to
the incumbent registry, VeriSign. In May, Telcordia confirmed this
ranking after evaluating an additional round of comments from all five
applicants. 

VeriSign's current agreement for .NET is scheduled to run out on 30 June
2005. The agreed framework for ICANN and VeriSign's new arrangement will
be set out in a new .NET Registry agreement which will strike a balance
between innovation and business certainty, with the need to ensure
competition, security and stability in the domain name system. 

Commenting on the designation, Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of
ICANN, stated: "We would like to thank all five qualified applicants,
the entire Internet community, ICANN's Generic Supporting Organization,
and Telcordia for the work in making this a successful process."