At least three companies, all three of which administer other current Internet domains, are believed serious challengers to VeriSign for the next contract to administer the .net domain, according to at least one published report.
NeuStar of Virginia already administers .biz, while Afilias of Ireland administers .info and Frankfurt, Germany nonprofit Denic eG administers that country’s .de domain, and all three have indicated they plan to bid for administering .net, currently administered by VeriSign, the New York Times reported January 18.
VeriSign—which also manages .com—has said .net is worth over five million registered domain names, millions of daily page and site views, 155 billion e-mail messages, and about $1.4 million worth of commercial transactions, not to mention an estimated 40 percent of government domains allowing access by way of .net.
Those government domains include the White House, the Senate, several agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration, VeriSign’s Tom Galvin told the Times.
VeriSign’s current .net contract expires at the end of June, and picking the new administrator will be the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’s job.
But some observers think VeriSign isn’t exactly a lock to renew the deal, particularly in light of its public battle with ICANN over a year ago regarding the Site Finder Service—redirecting queries from dead or inactive sites to a search engine supported by VeriSign-signed advertisers—with ICANN calling the Site Finder search diversions unacceptable and VeriSign suing ICANN for “overstepping.”
A federal court threw out the suit but a new one was filed and still pending in California’s state courts. VeriSign lodged an antitrust suit in federal court but, in the state action, accuses ICANN only of violating terms of the 2001 contract assigning VeriSign to administer .com.
"Were VeriSign to defer offering such services to the public during the effective period of the 2001 .com Registry Agreement, or to modify such services due to ICANN's conduct and threats,” the state filing from last August said, “VeriSign will suffer irreparable losses of revenue from third parties, profits, market share, competitive position, reputation and good will. Furthermore, millions of Internet users will be deprived of the improved functionality and quality of VeriSign's services."
ICANN chief operating officer Paul Twomey told the Times the group set up an independent body to review .net administration applications exactly to avoid the appearance of bias because of the VeriSign suit. "We are on record that the operator could be the present one," he told the paper.
