Network
Solutions, Inc. (NSI) released a statement today commenting on the
one-week extension it reached yesterday with officials from The Department of Commerce’s National
Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), allowing NSI to
continue to provide domain name registration.
Yesterday The Department of Commerce and NSI agreed to extend the period of
the five-year Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218742 for one week through
October 7, 1998. Under the terms of the agreement, NSI operates
the .com, .net, .org and .edu registries.
The government said the extension would allow more time to further
negotiations between NSI and the government, and to explore introducing
competition into the domain name arena.
A statement issued today from NSI, founded back in 1979, said: “Network
Solutions has contracted with more than 2.3 million registrants in .com,
.net, .org and .edu. Representatives for both NTIA and Network Solutions
will continue in their negotiations during this extension and remain
confident regarding the continued stability and security of the Internet.”
In August, Network Solutions chief executive Gabriel Battista
told Reuters in an interview that the company was preparing to face
competition. “We’ve geared up significantly over the last few years with
investments, financial resources,” Battista said.
“We’ve advocated early 1997 that we believe competition is the best thing
for the industry, the best thing for the Internet and the best thing for
us,” he said. “The whole Internet has now evolved into a different
situation. What made sense then does not make sense for the future.”