Digital Trends
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion spend much of the latter part of 2008 trying to take over encryption developer Certicom—only to have the company seemingly poached out from under them in late January by Verisign. Although Certicom signed a deal to be acquired by Verisign, RIM apparently believes money can talk—it has gone back to Certicom with a new offer that’s nearly twice as rich as the original proposal…and Certicom confirms RIM’s new pitch beats Verisign.
In late 2008, BlackBerry maker RIM was all set to take over Canadian security software firm Certicom…but right at the end of the year things suddenly got strange with Certicom claiming RIM’s bid to take over the company was too low. Now, VeriSign has swooped in and inked its own takeover deal for Certicom, in a transaction valued at about $73 million…or, really, about $40 million once Certicom’s cash-on-hand and short-term marketable securities transfer over to VeriSign.
Domain registrar and net infrastructure operator VeriSign announced today that it will raise the fees for registering .com and .net domains by $0.40 beginning October 1, 2008. The fee increases are allowed under Verisign’s agreement with ICANN; under that agreement, Verisign can raise fees for .com domain registration in four of the six years between 2006 and 2012.
The new fees for registering a .com domain will be $6.86; a .net domain will run $4.23. These fees are components of th overall cost to register a domain; various registrars have different fee structures, but will likely pass along the fee increases directly to domain buyers.
Internet giant VeriSign is known to most Internet users as a domain registrar, and perhaps also as the company which actually managed the heavily-populated .com and .net top-level domains through some controversial contracts with the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Now, the company has announced it plans to undergo a strategic re-alignment, selling off business units where it’s not the clear leader in a market, in order to focus on providing Internet infrastructure services like SSL certificates, its domain registration business, and providing related services like identity protection.
VeriSign, the company which manages the popular .com and .net top-level domains, has announced that it will raise prices for registering and renewing in the .com and .net spaces beginning October 15, 2007. Wholesale prices for .com domains will go up 10 percent to $6.42, while wholesale prices for .net domains will go up 10 percent to $3.85. In all probability, these increases will be passed along to domain owners directly by their registrars.
If you thought the digital video marketplace wasn’t already crowded enough, with several operations already up and running and several more looking to enter the market…the scene just gained onemore competitor, with AxiomTV entering into a partnership with domain registar VeriSign to offer a family-friendly digital video service distributed via VeriSign’s Intelligent Content Delivery Network (CDN).
VeriSign’s CDN is based on the company’s “widely deployed” Kontiki peer-to-peer sharing technology, which leverages the download-enhancing potentials of P2P technology while offering reliability and maintaining the media’s security. According to VeriSign, their CDN technology “fundamentally changes the economics of the broadband delivery of DVD-quality video”—although we’re sure BitTorrent will have something to say about their once their commercial video service goes live. Kontiki is already used by VeriSign partners like AOL, the BBC, and SkyTV.
The board of director of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has voted to approve a new deal with registrar VeriSign which keeps the company in place as the registrar the Internet’s .com top-level domain through at least the year 2012, and maybe even longer.
Under the agreement, VeriSign will retain control of the .com registry through 2012, with the possibility of renewal. VeriSign will also be permitted to raise wholesale fees for domains in the .com top-level domain in four of the next six years. VeriSign also controls the .net registry, and praised the agreement for following closely along the lines of the .net agreement, which ICANN approved in 2005.
The Internet Corporation of Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN), the closest thing the Internet has to a governing body, and giant registration and service provider VeriSign have posted a revised edition of their settlement agreement which, in addition to resolving their dispute over VeriSign’s Site Finder service, would limit price increases which can be imposed by VeriSign on .com domain registrations and renewals.
ICANN and VeriSign reached an tentative settlement back in October 2005, mostly concerning mutual lawsuits over VeriSign’s Site Finder service, which changed the way VeriSign resolved requests for non-existent domains in the .com and .net top-level domains. The new agreement incorporates new terms in response to feedback from the Internet community, and limits the amount of money VeriSign can charge for renewals and new registrations in the .com top-level domain.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN) and registration services provider VeriSign have reached a tentative agreement to end their long-standing lawsuits against each other over how VeriSign resolves non-existent domain names for top-level domains it controls, like .com and .net. The agreement must still be approved by ICANN’s board after a period of public comment; you can see both ICANN’s and VeriSign’s announcements of the agreement at their sites.
The dispute dates back to late 2003, when VeriSign rolled out a new service called Site Finder which altered the way non-existent domains under VeriSign’s purview were resolved. When users typed in or clicked a link pointing to certain sites which didn’t exist
From the Verisign press release:
VeriSign, Inc. and Cox Communications today announced that Cox has implemented VeriSign NetDiscoveryServices to help ensure compliance of its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)-based cable telephony services with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Cox Communications launched its 12th telephony market in December 2003 in Roanoke, Va., and its first using VoIP technology. Eleven other Cox systems offer Cox Digital Telephone using circuit-switched technology, all CALEA-compliant since first introduced in 1997.
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