Canada NewsWire

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Attention Technology Reporters:

Internic Reports Growing Dot-Name Interest

First Dot-Names Go Live Next Week

OTTAWA, Canada  / Jan 11 2002 - Thousands of individuals are pre-registering 
their personal dot-names in the countdown to the launch of the world's newest
Internet addresses. 

"Tuesday, January 15, marks the dawn of a new era on the Internet," said Rob Hall,
President and CEO of Internic.ca.  "For the first time, there is an Internet
registry designed exclusively for people, aimed at giving individuals their
very own personal name on the Net.  As more and more people hear about the Net's
new personal addresses, they're signing up - every day this week, we've been
busy handling new registrations."

Pre-registrations for dot-name are available online at www.internic.ca.

In October, Internic.ca's sister company, Namescout.com, was accredited by
London-based Global Name Registry as the world's first dot-name registrar.  
Both companies have since been accepting online pre-registrations from individuals 
who wish to be among the first to "put their name on the net".  The first 
pre-registrations become usable on the Internet on January 15.  For the next 
few months, new dot-name registrations will continue to be processed and 
resolved every couple of weeks, until the process of launching the world's 
newest Internet registry is fully completed in May and real time registration 
is fully available.

"People recognize that dot-name is different - the domain and the unique e-mail 
address will give people a personal presence in the new Global Village," said Hall.  
"Until now, individuals have had little choice but to compete with businesses and 
governments and other organizations in the 40 million dot-com, dot-ca, dot-biz 
and other Internet names space."

With dot-name registrations, people also gain an e-mail address that they can 
forward to whatever work or home address they wish.  "Think of it - an e-mail 
address you can keep for life, and which is as easy for friends and family to 
remember as your name," said Hall.  "As people learn more about dot-name, 
demand is going to keep getting stronger and stronger."

Internic.ca and Namescout.com have been at the forefront of Internet development 
since the earliest days. Internic.ca was Canada's first dot-ca accredited registrar 
and is now Canada's leading dot-ca registrar.  President and CEO Rob Hall was a 
leader in the two-year process of creating Canada's new Canadian Internet 
Registration Authority (CIRA), and served as CIRA's founding Chair.  
ICANN-accredited Namescout.com was recently accredited as the world's 
first registrar for the brand-new dot-name domain, has just been provisionally 
accredited by the Australian Domain Authority (auDA) as one of Australia's first 
wave of new dot-au registrars, and is now ranked among the world's top 50 registrars.  
Internic.ca and Namescout.com are owned by Momentous.ca of Ottawa, Canada, and 
serve customers around the globe from offices in North America, Australia and the 
Caribbean.  They are the world's only registrar group simultaneously accredited by 
ICANN, CIRA, auDA and the Global Name Registry. 

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For further information: or to arrange a media interview, please call 
Lisa McAdam at (613) 715-3544 or e-mail her at lisa@internic.ca