New.net, BulkRegister.com Deal On New Registry Platform

Pasadena, Calif.-based New.net and BulkRegister.com, the fourth largest ICANN-accredited registrar, Thursday inked a deal to sell New.net domain names as early as October 2001.

The news comes one day before the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) council is scheduled to meet in Montevideo, Uruguay for its quarterly meeting.

As part of the deal, Baltimore, Md.-based BulkRegister.com will use based Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) technology to sell domain names to New.net business customers and directly interface with New.net’s registry platform.

The company is building to a draft protocol specification that is being developed through standard processes of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). EPP is currently being developed for general registry-registrar use.

“Our mission is to make the Internet a simpler and more efficient place to do business, and this relationship with BulkRegister.com amplifies this effort,” says New.net CEO David Hernand, CEO. “The availability for established partners to begin using this technology in the coming months will significantly increase the ease by which New.net domain names are sold by registrars and other Web services companies.”

The problem is that the companies are making this deal without ICANN’s blessing.

Three months ago at the last ICANN meetings in Stockholm, New.net issued a White Paper proposing a new process for the selection and release of new domain name extensions – involving a hybrid of consensus and market approaches to be applied in order to stimulate competition and innovation in the name space.

But, while ICANN debates the likelihood of such a system, private companies such as BulkRegister say they are moving forward to benefit their customers and get a jump on the competition – in this case: Verisign, Afilias and NeuLevel.

New.net currently sells its names through a network of over 4,000 affiliates, ICANN-accredited registrars and other sales partners, including DomainZoo.com, #1 Domain Names International, Afternic.com, Domainoo, EarthLink , Prodigy , Juno Online and ExciteAtHome .

Executives at New.net say this is the first in what they expect will be a series of registrar relationships to put the EPP registry platform into service. The company says it will make the EPP formally available to domain name registrars and Web services companies beginning next month.