Prodigy Joins New.net's Team of ISP Partners - Brief Article

ISP Business, May, 2001

New.net, a domain name registry created to meet the market demand for Web addresses with logical, easy-to-remember extensions, today announced an agreement with Prodigy Communications, a US Internet service provider (ISP), that will increase the number of ISP accounts with access to New.net domains by more than three million.

New.net offers Prodigy customers access to new top-level domains (TLDs) such as .shop, .mp3, .inc, .kids, .sports, .family, .chat, .video, .club, .hola, .soc, .med, .law, .travel, .game, .free, .ltd, .gmbh, and .tech. New.net has developed a proprietary approach, using software technology deployed at either the network level by partner ISPs or on individual PCs, to add new TLDs to the existing Internet naming system.

"Prodigy was one of the early pioneers in providing Internet service and is once again taking an industry-leading position," said David Hernand, CEO of New.net. "Their participation will help significantly in our effort to drive adoption of New.net domain names."

As part of the agreement with Prodigy, New.net will create a co-branded domain name registration site where Prodigy customers will be able to purchase Web addresses that use the new extensions.

"New.net helps satisfy our customers' demand for shorter, more descriptive domain names that they can use," said Gregory G. Williams, COO of Prodigy. "Our partnership with New.net provides a great and timely customer benefit for Prodigy members."

This new agreement adds to the growing base of Internet users who can reach Web sites with New.net domain names. Combining those who are customers of partner ISPs and those who receive the company's plug-in software via a download partner, New.net estimates that the number of unique Internet users in the US who will have access to these new domains in May 2001 will be approximately 42 million growing to 54 million by September 2001. These users represent 34 percent of the US Census Bureau's estimate of total Internet users in May, growing to 43 percent in September.

Prodigy is the latest to join New.net's current set of high-profile ISP partners: EarthLink, NetZero, Juno, and Excite@Home. New.net will continue to develop strategic partnerships with ISPs of all sizes to expand the availability of the new names at the network level. ISPs that wish to add the ability to view the New.net domains can find instructions as well as system software download instructions by visiting New.net's Web site. Web users who do not use one of the partner ISPs can activate their Internet browsers to recognize the new domain names in a few seconds by visiting the New.net site.