VeriSign Battling Rivals For .net Domain AdministrationVeriSign Battling Rivals For .net Domain Administration

VeriSign Inc. is facing its first serious competition for the operation of a Top Level Domain (TLD), announcing Wednesday that it submitted a formal proposal to retain its control over the .net TLD. A spokesman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said Wednesday that bids for administration of .net had been submitted and the names of all bidders were being prepared for public release.

Companies that have said they will bid on the .net operation include NeuStar, which administers .biz TLDs; Afilias, which administers .info; and a Germany non-profit called Denic eG.

Patrick Burns, a spokesman for VeriSign, said the fact that VeriSign has spent more than $150 million to develop a robust Internet administration infrastructure should work in the firm's favor. He noted that VeriSign has successfully handled more than 4 billion .net Domain Name System (DNS) queries daily.

In Germany, a spokeswoman for Denic said a victory by her firm would inject badly needed competition in the market. Media reports quoted Sabine Dolderer, a Denic board member, as saying: "There should be greater competition in this market. Currently there is too little and there is only one very dominant player."

Administrating and operating .net has been lucrative for VeriSign, which charges $5 a year for each domain name, resulting in an estimated $30 million annually. VeriSign also operates the much larger .com domain.

Although .net is much smaller than .com, many large Web sites using the .com moniker travel through .net servers, making the .net domain more important than it initially seems.

On another level, VeriSign and ICANN are involved in litigation in California over VeriSign's Site Finder Service. ICANN has said an independent body is reviewing .net applications to avoid any connection with the litigation.

In announcing that it had submitted a bid for .net Wednesday, VeriSign noted that its application is supported by MCI, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems, among others.

In a statement, VeriSign said: "In support of .net, VeriSign operates 18 domain name constellation sites around the world that monitor and process global Internet traffic, provide customer service 24 hours a day, seven days per week, every day of the year in 150 languages, and maintains a TLD monitoring system."