A total of 9 registries have submitted full responses to operate the .au ccTLD in response to auDA’s Request for Tender (RFT) for the Registry Transformation Project (RTP).
The RFT was issued on 1 September with the closing date extended by 1 week to 2 October at the request of a majority of respondents to allow them more time to provide high quality responses, according to a short statement issued by auDA.
The current registry operator is Neustar, which has operated the registry since 2002 when they were awarded the contract to design, develop and implement a Registry system and associated Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure and provide a platform for innovative usage of this technology in the provision of âWorldâs Best Practiceâ Registry services to the .au Domain Administration. In the 15 years total registrations have grown ten-fold to 3,115,365 domains under management across all second level domains from just over 300,000.
The process started out disastrously with auDA claiming they would âbuild and operateâ the registry, but since then have moved to outsource the registry in a competitive tender process that, under the leadership of Bruce Tonkin, appears to have been running smoothly.