AOL and France Telecom get green light to sell Web names

America Online (AOL) and France Telecom are to start selling top level Web addresses.

The two companies are the first commercial bodies to manage Web sites ending in .com, .edu and .net. Until now, Internet domain names were the sole responsibility of Network Solutions (NSI), on behalf of the US government.

Icann, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced the appointments yesterday and will closely monitor the companies. A test period will start on 26 April and continue for 60 days.

"We won't be accepting registrations from 26 April," an AOL spokesman told Silicon.com, but he could not give a precise start-date.

AOL's previous experience lies with its membership registrations, which total over 17 million. "We already have the technical abilities and the infrastructure for coping with Web domains," the spokesman continued.

Bill Washburn, chief of content, info and language logic at real name technology company Centraal, said that NSI would be worried.

"NSI's apparent unwillingness to be customer service-oriented will come back to haunt them," he told Silicon.com. "They probably thought they'd only have to compete with the little guys, but AOL and France Telecom are very experienced in providing good customer service.

"NSI is known across the board as not caring about customers - and that anyone would be better than them," he said.

The other test registrars are Core (Internet Council of Registrars), Melbourne IT and register.com.

The chosen companies will meet NSI regularly over the next week, to discuss interfaces for its colossal database of Web registrations.