From:
http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-25oct01.htm


Marina del Rey, California, USA (25 October 2001) - The Internet for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today announced the signing of its first
formal agreement with a country code top level domain (ccTLD) operator. The
agreement is with the auDA, the operator of the Australian ccTLD registry
for domain names that end in the suffix, .au.

"It is not surprising that the Australian ccTLD would be the first to sign
an agreement," said ICANN President/CEO, M. Stuart Lynn. "The Australian
Internet community and the Australian government have a longstanding
commitment to ICANN. Australia has a well developed Internet community due
in no small measure to the pioneering work of Robert Elz." Elz, an engineer
at the University of Melbourne, has managed .au since it was established.
Earlier this year, it was announced that .au would be turned over to auDA.

auDA - which stands for ".au Domain Administration" - is a non-profit
company that was established in April 1999 by the Australian Internet
community. Subject to Australian government oversight, auDA, will now act as
the industry self-regulatory body for the .au namespace, with responsibility
for introducing competition in the Australian domain name registration
space, evolution of .au names policy, and the introduction of an Australian
domain name dispute resolution process.

"This is a significant milestone for Australia's Internet users and for the
global Internet community," observed Chris Disspain, CEO of auDA. "We are
pleased to have signed an agreement with ICANN, and are committed to our
role in ICANN's larger mandate of coordinating global Internet stability."

Australia was an early participant in the Internet, beginning with the
Australian Computer Science Network (ACSnet) in the mid-1970s. The .au ccTLD
was delegated to Robert Elz in March 1986, shortly after the Internet
domain-name system was deployed in 1985 by the University of Southern
California's Information Sciences Institute (which then performed the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions under contract to the
United States Government). Robert Elz has been a long-standing leader in the
development of the Internet in Australia, and has selflessly served in a
volunteer capacity since his appointment as .au ccTLD's manager. Australia
has a population of nearly 20,000,000, of which over an estimated 8,000,000
are Internet users.

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