ICANN appoints VeriSign to manage .net domain

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) chose Verisign to manage the .net top level domain name.

ICANN hired Telcordia 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.

VeriSign keeps control of the domain that is has managed since 2000 alongside .com, and promised to lower prices of .net domain names. VeriSign currently asks a $6 fee for each domain, but will drop the fee to $4.25. ICANN receives 75 cents of the fee.