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Network Solutions is no longer the only place to get a .com name.
On Wednesday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers identified the five companies that will test a shared domain-name registry. They will compete with Network Solutions, which has held the exclusive rights to Internet registration until now.
The companies are America Online, Register.com, the Internet Council of Registrars, France Telecom, and Australia's Melbourne IT.
The 60-day test period will assess the technical stability of the registry system, which must now be shared. After that, any company will be able to sign up to register domain names.
ICANN also announced that 29 other applicant companies have met its accreditation criteria. The companies will likely be accredited to compete as registrars after the initial test period ends 24 June.
On the list: A Technology Company, Alldomains.com, American Domain Name Registry, AT&T, DomainRegistry.com, InfoRamp, Internet Domain Registrars, NameSecure.com, Nominalia, Verio, and WebTrends among others.
Until Wednesday's announcement, registration was the sole province of Network Solutions, which registered all Internet addresses ending with .com, .net, or .org. It has had an exclusive contract with the federal government since 1993.
To move toward a more open market in the name registration business, the US Department of Commerce created ICANN, a nonprofit group established to take over administration of the Internet. This was one of the first major steps taken by the organization, which is still in its infancy.
The new registrars will pay US$9 per name to Network Solutions, which will still run a registry system that serves registered names to the network.
That is an interim figure and does not represent the final price, which still needs to be worked out between the Commerce Department and Network Solutions.
"Any time you have a cost analysis it takes some time to go through," said Andrew Pincus, general counsel at the Department of Commerce. "We didn't want to delay the test period to work that out."
NSI and ICANN will also be working out issues that will bring more certainty to the wholesale price of access to the registry, he said.
"We're trying to manage a transition... to a new set of rules and to open [the] market and [create] competition," said ICANN interim chairman Esther Dyson. "The challenge is to balance that transition fairly."
The registrars also pay a one-time licensing fee of $10,000.
Plans call for the competition to open to an unlimited number of companies worldwide starting in 60 days.
