May, 2001 : VeriSign Expands .bz Domain Availability

📅 May 31, 2001 - VeriSign, Inc. (verisign.com), a leading provider of Internet trust services, announced on Thursday that its Global Registry Services division will support registration of .bz names to its customer base of over 80 domain name registrars, which account for over 75% of domain names registered on the Internet.

University Management Limited, which manages the .bz domain chose VeriSign to provide the services.
?We are pleased that University Management Limited has chosen VeriSign,? said Herb Hribar, executive vice president and general manager of VeriSign Global Registry Services. ?We believe .bz is primed for growth, and its availability through our network of distribution partners will help drive this growth.''
The .bz domain is an unrestricted and largely untapped domain name space on the Internet. .bz is the country code TLD associated with the nation of Belize. University Management Limited has been given the rights to manage the domain. Under the terms of the agreement, VeriSign will also provide registry database services and propagate the database throughout the Internet from its global network of name servers.
?We selected VeriSign as our registry provider because of their network of distribution partners through which most of the world's Web addresses are registered, plus their proven technical abilities in managing domain name systems,'' said Juan Carlos Namis, General Manager of University Management Limited. v
VeriSign will make the .bz domain available through its Shared Registration System, the system currently in place to support other top-level domains, including .com. Use of the SRS will allow multiple domain name registrars to simultaneously access the .bz registry.