Domain name machinations promise users big payoffs

As the government takes steps to bring competition to the registration of Internet names, network executives may start benefitting from lower prices, quicker response times and an explosion of new services that will simplify doing business online.

Indeed, just the threat of competition has already brought some of these benefits to the marketplace. Internet name registration fees, for example, have dropped from $100 for a two-year registration to $70. Most domain names are now functional within 24 hours. And Internet vendors are coupling registration services with e-mail, URL forwarding and Web hosting services.

But Internet vendors expect even better offerings as the number of registrars grows.

"What's really important about getting competition in the registration business is to get the service price-competitive," says Ed Hansen, public relations manager at Mind-Spring, an Atlanta-based ISP that is one of the largest processors of name registrations. "Customers also should be able to expect what is promised - virtually immediate registration - and that doesn't happen all the time."

"Corporate end users will see more reliability, more security and a greater selection of services because of competition," predicts Richard Foreman, CEO of Register.com, a New York registrar in business since June.

Another advantage of competition is one-stop shopping for Web site services. "Providers are going to be able to give end users address registration, Web hosting services, and longdistance and local services all in one shot," says Michele Pelino, a senior analyst at The Yankee Group. "That kind of end-to-end capability is going to be an advantage from the provider side as well as the customer side."

For the past seven years, companies requesting Internet names ending in .com, .net and .org had to go through a single registrar, Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) of Herndon, Va. Under a contract with the U.S. government, NSI assigns new domain names, maintains a central database of assigned names and handles name-related disputes.

The Clinton administration targeted NSI's monopoly position in 1997, when the government announced plans to privatize the management of Internet domain name allocation. Last November, the Department of Commerce selected a nonprofit organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to oversee the privatization process. So far, slow but steady progress has been made.

Developments last week included:

The Commerce Depart-ment extended its trial of five new registrar companies until Aug. 6. Eleven other companies are developing interfaces to the central domain name database in preparation for offering registration services later this summer.

ICANN withdrew its plan to add a $1 fee to all domain name registrations. The group also agreed to hold its next board meeting in public.

The House of Represen-tatives' Commerce Committee held hearings on privatization of the domain name system: 13 experts from government, industry and academia testified.

As the debate rages on in Washington, D.C., about how best to open up the domain name registration business, benefits for corporate end users have been largely overlooked.

Even more significant than the price drops is the anticipated introduction of new and improved registration services. NSI, for example, today is announcing an online directory service that will help businesses that choose its registration services be located on the Web by potential customers. NSI already offers e-mail, Web site forwarding and billboard advertising.

"The new competitive environment makes everyone more attuned to what they can do better," says NSI spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy.

Registrars will be competing on issues of speed, downtime and customer service. Register.com, for example, asserts that it has not experienced outages, unlike NSI. Register.com also claims its domain names can't be stolen or redirected, as is possible with NSI's baseline security.

Other new services being offered by Register.com include the ability to register names in all country codes simultaneously, and the option to withhold the name of the registering company for privacy purposes. "We can offer very discrete domain name registrations for companies that want to register in a hush-hush manner," Foreman says.

Another area in which improvement is needed is in the ability to transfer domain names from one organization or service provider to another. "Hopefully, competition will bring a way to provide a level of security as well as an ease in transferring domain names. Today, that's about as difficult as moving a house," says Serge Wilson, CEO of Freemerchant. com, a site that hosts more than 10,000 cyberstores.