RegistrarsAsia subsidiary AusRegistry won the tender with auDA for registry services in the com.au, net.au, asn.au, id.au and org.au spaces.
Adrian Kinderis, managing director-sales and marketing at RegistrarsAsia said it was a firm believer that the process should be transparent, and that consumers be looked after and not misled. -There's been a lacking of education and people don't know any better," he said.
He also admits that AusRegistry has a big job ahead of it. -We have to build something which hasn't been built on a country code level before," he said. -We're not just running one registry, we're running fiveââ,¬"that is quite a challenge."
According to Kinderis, one of the reasons AusRegistry had turned to Afilias, operator of global top-level domain .info, as a strategic partner was because of its experience with EPP (extensible provisioning protocol). The auDA's request for tender included the requirement that the registry be developed using EPP. Kinderis describes the protocol as the future international standard for registries.
Kinderis said Afilias had bought into AusRegistry becoming a minor partner, but would not disclose what percentage it had acquired. RegistrarsAsia owns the remaining portion of the company. -They'll bring the experience of having launched a registry on a global scale," he said. -We are building from the ground up here."
Kinderis said AusRegistry aims to have the test bed for registrars up and running by February, and hopes to go live by April or May.
As a result of winning the tender, Kinderis said RegistrarsAsia would cease to operate as a reseller and registrar in .au. He said this was to step away from any possibility of being considered a monopoly, and also to remain transparent. -From the moment of going live we will stop operating as a seller of .au," he said, adding that it would continue selling global top level names.
AuDA has licensed AusRegistry as a registry operator for four years. It won the licence over five other companies which responded to auDA's request for tneder to provider registry services to all 2LDs on offer. A statement issued by auDA said the tenders were evaluated by an independent panel, looking at financial, technical, and the other criteria which were set out in the request for tender document.
