The suspense is over! Finally ICANN reports the candidate list in the VeriSign succession for the generic extension of management .net. The process suffered numerous delays (see our previous editions) and the short number of comments into the community- no sooner than a ten!- owing to the discussions about the selection criterion, made that we felt afraid of the indifference about this business transaction. Will it be the sign of weariness into the industry?. The small surprise hidden by the only five aspirants could be a sign.

To every gentleman, every honour. It is for sure that the present net operator won’t let go away this comfortable source of profits. Of course, the VeriSign golden egg hen is still the .com but the six million dominion names into .Net is still a comfortable basket. Doesn’t it seem like a paradox the VeriSign candidature, one of ones competitors that have to go on with an opening face? Actually, if the American Department of Commerce really wants to break the "monopoly" society that has already had to quit to .ORG, the rivalry rules hinder to shut out VeriSign of the road simply and clearly! On the other hand, apart that the matter "Site Finder" stained the VeriSign commercial reputation, its technical occupation by an expert always goes in direction of the Registrars. That means this will be a hard fight!

Other candidates aren’t unworthy. We can find ten in the .EU or seven in .Org and between them a lot of "habitúes". For a register, the technical investment is almost the same that they need for manage one or more extensions. The raising economy that the .Net permitted them to do, warn the candidates like Afilias- which is in charge of .info and .Org administration- and NeuLevel- .Biz, .US and .CN operator. This last one works in association with Japanese Register from .JP in order to establish "Sentan Registry Services", a way to contact gTLD into the ccTLDs universe though .Net inclines itself to serve the biggest possible community. Another candidate is asking for the same: "Core ++" re-groups Core- Registars a very well known association and presented on auction calls in 2.000 from .EU and .Org- and from Registers like .ZA and .BR. Another Register and the last aspirant, the German Denic that brings its hard experience because of the registered number of .DE surpasses the nets with its status nº2 in the world, we can ask them, in a little cruel way, how is it going to arrange itself?, but we can’t avoid mention that the true strategic importance of net is in its disinterested tendencies! However, candidates will know what they need to consider on June 30, until then, it is possible to leave comments about different aspirants that are in the ICANN site.

See: http://www.icann.org/announcements /announcement-19jan05.htm

JCV & SB