RegistrarsAsia and Afilias Unite to Bid for .AU Registry

Leading Australian registrar and first new gTLD registry partner to submit tender proposal to auDA for enhanced .AU registry system

MARINA DEL REY, CA - 12 November, 2001 - RegistrarsAsia, the fastest growing domain name registrar in the Asia Pacific region, and Afilias, the .INFO registry, today announced that they have united in a partnership to bid for the operation of the .AU registry in response to the request for tender (RFT) from the Australian Domain Name Authority (auDA).

“We are pleased that Afilias have partnered with us to bid to operate the .AU registry following its successful launch of .INFO. With Afilias, we are well positioned to grow the industry and meet the demands that will be placed on the .AU registry operator," said Simon Delzoppo, CEO of RegistrarsAsia. “RegistrarsAsia has built a robust registration system for all top-level domains that embraces the many needs of the Australian market. With this experience and Afilias’ registry knowledge, we are confident that our proposal offers the vision and know-how that auDA require in a new registry services provider.”

RegistrarsAsia and Afilias have pooled their industry experience in order to create a substantial bid that fulfills the requirements of auDA to maintain a strong and stable registry while migrating to the new Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) standard. In the tender, RegistrarsAsia demonstrates a unified selling propositions to define the global .AU brand from which specific line extensions will be tailored to meet the needs of each market segments.

Afilias brings a global perspective from member registrars that are industry veterans, including, VeriSign Global Registrar Operations and Tucows, Inc. They have experience in managing the Registry/ Registrar Protocol (RRP) and new EPP standards, while having a deep understanding of marketing, technology, and privacy issues, being a global company headquartered in the European Union (EU).

“Afilias is keen to bring to the Australian market its experience in introducing a new registry which includes improvements such as the first implementation of a gTLD thick registry system, near real-time WHOIS updating, and worldwide DNS propagation in under 20 minutes," said Hal Lubsen, CEO of Afilias. “The combined experience of Afilias’ 18 member registrars should enable us to make a significant contribute to RegistrarsAsia’s vision for enhanced registry services for Australia."

About RegistrarsAsia
RegistrarsAsia is an essential Internet service supplier specialising in the registration of Internet Domain Names. RegistrarsAsia is accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and qualified in the registration of all top level names currently available (.com, .net and .org through Verisign, .biz through Neulevel and .info through Afilias). Country code domains are also made available through accreditation with each of the country code registries with a focus on the Asia Pacific region (.au, .nz, .hk, .cn). For more information about RegistrarsAsia, please visit www.regasia.info

About Afilias
Afilias -- the registry for .INFO, the first new global unrestricted top-level domain -- seeks to create the most direct and intuitive path to knowledge on the Web. Afilias is a consortium of 18 of the world's leading domain name registrars, with operations across 10 countries.

Afilias was formed in September of 2000 in recognition of the need for increased competition in the domain name space. In aggregate, the company's member registrars registered more than 10 million domain names and collectively offer a wide range of related in Internet services, including country-code domain name registrations, country-code domain name registrations, country-code registry operations, Web hosting, and ISP services.

Afilias' shareholders include: 1stDomain.net, a division of G+D International LLC; Corporate Domain, Inc.; Domain Bank, Inc.; DomainInfo AB; Domain People, Inc.; Domain Registrations Services, Inc.; Enter-Price Multimedia AG (EPAG); Global Media Online, Inbc.; Internet Council of Registrars (CORE); Netnames International Ltd.; Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar Operations; Polar Software Ltd. d/b/a Signdomains.com; PSI-USA, Inc. Register.com; Schlund + Partner AG; SiteName.com LLC; Speednames, Inc.; Tucows.

Afilias maintains international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and U.S. headquarters in Newtown, PA. For more information, please visit www.afilias.info