http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2556949389-26a 08:41 AM ET 11/05/98 EU endorses Internet address reform plan BRUSSELS, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The European Commission welcomed on Wednesday a U.S. plan for reforming the Internet name and address system, saying its earlier concerns about global representation had been met. ``We have been informed of widespread support for this proposal both from the (European Union) member states and from the private sector in Europe,'' European Telecommunications Commissioner Martin Bangemann said in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley. However, Bangemann said the EU executive was reviewing a related deal aimed at phasing out the exclusive right of a U.S. company, Network Solutions Inc (NSI), to register names in the most popular segment of the Internet. The Commission wanted to ensure the deal, negotiated by the U.S. Commerce Department, was consistent with EU competition rules, he said. Bangemann was reacting to a Clinton administration plan for ending the U.S. government's management of the numerical address and name system that routes Internet traffic, such as a request to view a Web site or send electronic mail. It involves setting up a new nonprofit corporation in California, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which will be run by an international board of directors. It will also end NSI's monopoly over registration of Internet names ending in the sought-after suffixes, or ``top-level domains,'' .com, .org and .net. NSI must allow competing firms to register those names in its database. The new corporation will have the authority to introduce further competition into the name registration system. The European Internet community and the Commission criticised an earlier Commerce Department proposal for reforming the Internet address system, saying it gave U.S. interests too much control. Bangemann said he was satisfied with the current plan's effort to ensure balanced international representation in the new corporation. He praised provisions stating that no more than half of the board members can be citizens of any one geographic region and that each region must have at least one board representative. ``The Commission will continue to have the global functioning of the Internet as a guiding principle and we will address our point of view to the new Corporation as needed,'' he said. ^REUTERS@ ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done directly from our website for all our lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
