Utility for merged data, voice worlds - Top Stories - Brief Article

Information Superhighways Newsletter, Dec, 2001

Even as he was in talks with NSI, VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos had his sights set on a bigger market -- telephony.

The company recently completed its $1.2 billion acquisition of Illuminet Holdings Inc., whose independent carrier-to-carrier switching network routes land-line and wireless calls and enables carriers to offer caller ID, roaming and other services. Sclavos' plan is to create a global directory based on the domain name database, which looks up about five billion Web addresses a day, to find phone numbers and Web addresses, as well as offer location-based services for people, regardless of whether they are on their telephone, handheld or PC. The closest analogy would be a utility.

"Our ultimate goal is to be so ubiquitous in the services we deliver that we get taken for granted," Sclavos told Reuters in an interview at his office in Mountain View, CA.

"I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but we want to provide the services basically every communication and every commerce transaction uses more or less 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said.