ICANN Engages Independent Evaluation Team to Review .NET Applications

ICANN is pleased to announce that it has engaged Telcordia Technologies, Inc. (see, http://www.telcordia.com/) to review and assess the applications submitted in response to the .NET Request for Proposals. This step has been taken in accordance with the timeline and procedure published by ICANN regarding the .NET Request for Proposals (see, https://www.icann.org/tlds/dotnet-reassignment/net-rfp-final-10dec04.pdf). This is in accordance with the open and transparent procedure for designating a "successor" registry operator; the current registry agreement between ICANN and VeriSign, Inc. was signed in May 2001, and will expire on 30 June 2005.

ICANN will complement the Telcordia team's capabilities with an international panel of DNS experts to contribute to the assessment effort.

The assessment process, already begun, will actively involve at least ten of the Telcordia technical and professional staff and include site visits to the qualified applicants.

Telcordia Technologies, Inc. is a leading global provider of telecommunications software and services for IP, wireline, wireless and cable. Telcordia is headquartered in Piscataway, N.J, with offices throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Central and Latin America. The evaluation team appointed by Telcordia brings a wide array of pertinent skills, knowledge and talents to this process.

Telcordia's Dr. David Sincoskie will lead a team that possesses 270 years of collective industry experience, with particular emphasis in networks, information databases, security and operations. Evaluation team demographics include two IEEE Fellows; a member of the National Academy of Engineering; a multi-cultural/multi-national composition, with nationals of Croatia, Greece, Pakistan, Taiwan, the UK and the US. In addition, 60% of the team possesses PhDs, spanning CS, EE and Economics;

Dr. Sincoskie, a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, is Group Senior Vice President of the Network Systems Research Laboratory at Telcordia. The laboratory consists of over 100 engineers and scientists involved in many aspects of Internet and broadband networking. Dr. Sincoskie's involvement with the Internet dates back to 1981 when he installed the first TCP/IP network at Bell Labs.

For media enquiries please contact: press@icann.org or telephone Tanzanica King, ICANN Communications and Operations Specialist on +1 310 301 5804.

About ICANN

ICANN is an internationally organised, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

See also, "Advisory Regarding Neutrality of Independent Evaluators".