| [ internet ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): Konzert () 날 짜 (Date): 1999년 1월 22일 금요일 오후 06시 41분 36초 제 목(Title): [퍼] 도메인 등록... (뉴욕타임즈) Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company January 22, 1999 Lottery May Select 3 Companies to Run Web Domain-Name Registration By JERI CLAUSING The nonprofit board charged with opening the Internet's lucrative domain-name registration business to competition is leaning toward an international lottery to pick the five companies that will get the first shot at ending the government-sanctioned monopoly held by Network Solutions Inc., the board's chairman said. Esther Dyson, interim chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said this week that she expected the selection process to be complete and that the registry for the three most popular top-level domains -- .com, .net and .org -- would be open to competition by the end of April. Since 1993, Network Solutions, based in Herndon, Va., has had the exclusive worldwide right to assign Internet addresses that end in any of those three-letter suffixes. To date, it has assigned some 3 million addresses, charging $70 apiece. This monopoly has allowed it to realize phenomenal growth. Its net income the first nine months of 1998 grew threefold, to $7.5 million, or 45 cents a share, compared with $2.5 million, or 20 cents a share, for the first nine months of 1997. On Jan. 5, it announced plans for both a stock split and a secondary offering of 4.58 million shares. Ms. Dyson said that the board, which was taking over the day-to-day administration of the Internet numbering and addressing system from the government, was assembling a panel of 10 experts to work with Network Solutions on the technical aspects of opening its registry to competitors. The board will also draft criteria for companies that wish to compete in the system, she said. "If more than five apply, which is very likely, we need a way to pick five. We will probably hold a lottery," she said, adding that special provisions would have to be made to insure geographic diversity "so that they're not all from North America or not all from Europe." The initial "threshold" for applicants will be quite high, Ms. Dyson said, "to make sure they are credible players, since in the long run the market will take care of people who are not credible." Eventually, scores of companies around the world are expected to enter the domain-registration business. But the board must decide a number of key issues before full-scale competition begins, among them how to structure three supporting organizations, including the crucial central group that will make recommendations on domain name and registration policies. But Network Solutions has not been sitting around waiting for the end. Just before Christmas, its stock prices tripled to an all-time high of $172.25 after it announced important alliances with the Netscape Communications Corp. and Yahoo. With a government guarantee that it will still be a registrar once competition is introduced, it has been aggressively building its own international network of partners to handle registrations around the world for Network Solutions. As of Thursday, the company said it had signed partnership agreements with 85 companies worldwide. Friday, the Information Technology Association of America is sponsoring a meeting in Washington to encourage a compromise on draft bylaws for the supporting group that will recommend how to further open competition in the registration business and when and how many new top-level domains should be added to the Internet. A number of draft bylaws have been proposed, with various groups arguing over whether trademark holders and big corporations would have too much control and how this new Internet government would be financed. The introduction of competition in the registration system will mark the first noticeable difference for consumers in the years-long process by which the government is handing control of the Internet to the private sector. Ms. Dyson's board remains under the oversight of the Commerce Department. The Clinton administration's decision nearly two years ago to get out of the Internet business was spurred in part by complaints from around the world that Network Solutions had an unfair monopoly on the domain-registration business. Last year, the company reported record numbers of registrations and record profits. Analysts said this week that they expected revenues to hit $90 million for 1998, compared with revenues of $6 million, $18 million and $45 million, respectively, the previous three years. Network Solutions' shares closed Thursday at $169.25, down $6.25 on a day that saw big hits across the board in technology stocks and a drop of almost 3 percent in the Nasdaq composite index. Last year, Network Solutions registered about 1.9 million new domain names, nearly double its 1997 total of 960,000 names. Its hold on the lucrative registration business has made it one of the high-flying Internet stocks on Wall Street in recent months, despite the imminent loss of its lucrative monopoly. Once new registrars are introduced, the company will be obligated to transfer registrations of addresses ending in .com, .net and .org to its competitors if customers decide they would rather deal with one of the new companies. But many analysts anticipate that the company will maintain its dominance, in part because the process for moving Internet governance to the private sector and opening the registration business has taken so long, giving the company much-needed time to diversify and solidify its leadership. The Clinton administration initially expected to move administration of the Internet to the private sector much more quickly. But after seeking public comment in July 1997 on the best way to do that, it discovered that the issue was highly contentious, as corporations, individuals and governments around the world jockeyed for a say in who would control the new nonprofit group. |