List closes for first domain name agents

The organisation proposing to change the way Internet domain names are registered has failed to persuade large organisations to become naming registrars.

The Interim Policy Oversight Committee (Ipoc) last week published a list of 41 organisations which have been approved as potential registration agents for seven new top-level domain names.

Under the provisional scheme, the registrars will compete with each other next year to offer a commercial registration service for addresses such as .store, .firm or .web.

The list includes no major industry players. The largest European organisations to have registered are the Swedish telcommunications supplier Telia and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

Willy Black, Ipoc member and MD of the UK registration agency Nominet, said: 'We would have liked to have seen some bigger names, but they may join later. This is a better start than some folk predicted.'

Ipoc closed its doors to registrar applications last week, but said the recruitment exercise will be repeated in future. No dates have been given.

The earliest the first wave of registrars could open for business will be January 15 1998, but Ipoc says this is a provisional date. UK organisations which have become registrars are the General Internet Corporation (associated with Netbenefit), Just Results and Business Names Registration.