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On Wednesday the Internet Society (ISOC) is expected to officially launch its bid for control of .org, and as part of that deal, Afilias is set to provide back end registry services to ISOC.
Yet the likelihood that the two firms will capture control of the top level domain is far from certain. A number of other companies and organisations are rumoured to be going after the valuable suffix, including Poptel, the UK-based manager of .coop, and AusRegistry, operator of Australia's .au country domain. These two organisations call their joint venture Unity Registry.
Meanwhile Global Name Registry, another British company and controller of .name, is thought to be making a bid in association with the International Red Cross, according to reports. Indeed, as many as eight bids are expected to emerge before the end of the month, when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decides who will get the .org domain at a meeting in Bucharest.
Many of the leading bids for .org are consortium bids involving private firms and non-profit organisations. ISOC for example is a Virginia-based association of Internet standards organisations including the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Architecture Board.
The race for .org is an important one, especially for the domain registry owners who last year saw registrations of new Internet domains fall for the first time in history. Analysts say that .org, with its 2.7 million registered name holders, could mean as much as USD10 million a year in revenues for the new owner.
VeriSign Inc controlled .org previously, but last year the firm hammered out a deal with ICANN that allowed VeriSign to retain control of the more popular .com and .net addresses in exchange for its surrendering of .org. The company also said it would contribute as much as USD5 million to assist in the handover.
When that deal was struck ICANN said its intention was to hand over .org to a not-for-profit group. In a rather ironic move however, VeriSign itself is thought to be partnering with a non-profit to recapture control of the domain name, which was set up to be used by non-profit organisations.
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