The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration today announced the award of a sole source contract to ICANN to perform technical functions supporting the Internet Domain Name system.

The department on February 21, 2006 issued a Request for Information to conduct market research about whether there were other qualified entities to perform these functions.

Based on this research and other information supporting its continued belief that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers) was uniquely qualified to perform the technical functions that are critical to the security and stability of the Internet, the department on May 18, 2006 announced its intention to award the sole source contract to ICANN.

ICANN has been performing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) services since 2000. They involve three interdependent technical coordinating functions for the Internet domain name and addressing system.

These functions include coordination of the assignment of technical protocol parameters, administration of certain responsibilities associated with Internet DNS root zone management, and allocation of Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) address space.

The present contract expires on September 30, 2006. The new contract will become effective on October 1, 2006.

# # #