The European Telecommunications Standards Institute of Sophia Antipolis has launched a pilot operation for the of site names with the objective of an '.eu'
The Sophipolitan Institute which succeeded with GSM enters into the battle of site names registration, for the moment it is a pilot operation but which could be made official in July. The aim is to be able to assure a site names management (.com; .org; .net) with the objective of opening a '.eu' which would cover the entire Europe.
Waiting for a '.eu'
The ETSI is one of the key elements of the Sophipolitan technopole. The presence of the ETSI has attracted almost all the big corporations dealing with cellular phones, telecommunication networks (Marconi, VLSI, Infineon, Qualcomm…) throughout the world. Its entrance into the registration of site names system shows the importance of the Internet nowadays and its connection between it and mobile telecommunications.
At the moment, this activity which is new for the ETSI must be ratified by all the directors of the Institute. It was made possible last year when the monopoly of NSI (Network Solutions Inc.) was broken. Even if the American corporation has kept the database management which has more than 10 millions of site names, it is no more alone to be able to market site names. In each country registration offices ('registrars') were created. In France, seven firms were registered by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers): 7ways, a Sophopolitan start-up; Gandi Worldnet; Oleane; Internet-Fr; Nordnet and Internext.
The ETSI, which also sells site names (now 500,000 names and 100,000 each month) will maybe manage them and above all the '.eu' one. A point which is at the moment being talked about at the Institute and also with the people in charge of the Web in the United States. But the ETSI is used to this kind of situations with very strategic and important files. Five big projects are then considered as extremely important and difficult.
Five very important files
First one: The UMTS, cellular phone third generation, a 25 people team working with 4,000 engineers from all over the world and their own firm.
Second one: telephony IP Tiphon project which creates a link between telecommunications and the Internet. Launched three years ago, nobody thought it would develop, now it gathers together more than forty leader firms.
Third one: Powerline, to create a telephone network thanks to the electrical network, with experimentations already in Great-Britain and in Germany.
Fourth one: an agreement was signed with the United States for high security radio-communications, which police is very interested in, as well as firemen, SAMU…
Fifth one: creation of links between banks and cellular phones operators (for example a first one was made between SFR and BNP) for e-commerce operations.