VeriSign Releases Domain Name Industry Brief Series Highlighting Market Trends in Domain Registrations

2003 Sets Records for New Registrations, Renewal Volumes, and Overall Growth

February 18, 2004; 04:52 AM

Mountain View, CA February 17, 2004 - (DomainInformer.com) -  VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq:VRSN), the leading provider of critical infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, today released The Domain Name Industry Brief, an analysis of the industry that includes a report on domain name registrations, industry trends, and an industry primer on the Domain Name System, domain names and the key players in the industry.

The report and primer (http://www.verisign.com/domainbrief) launch The Domain Name Industry Brief series, which will provide Internet users across the world with key statistical and analytical data on the domain name industry. Each quarter, the Brief will provide updated data and will showcase a quarterly topic related to key Internet trends.

Findings in the Brief include a strong rate of new registrations and a stabilizing base of domain names. Here are the highlights:

Growing 16 percent in 2003, total domain name registrations reached a peak of over 60 million domain names in 2003. With 52 percent of all registrations, .com and .net represent the most popular domain names. More than 30.4 million domain names are currently registered in .com and .net with more than 1.7 million of those names added during the final quarter of 2003.

Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) account for a growing portion of overall domain names and currently represent 40 percent of all domain name registrations. The majority of ccTLDs are registered in Europe with the top ten ccTLDs accounting for 71 percent of all ccTLD registrations. Several countries around the world have already launched Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) often known as "multilingual" domains that are compatible with the countries' ccTLD registrations. Other countries are planning to launch those capabilities this year.

According to VeriSign's Domain Name Primer, over 580 million people around the world use the Internet. The Internet represents the fastest growing technology, in terms of usage, of any previous decade in the world's history. Today, there are over 60 million registered domain names providing entry points onto the Internet.

"The report shows how domain name registrations are increasing across the board," said Rusty Lewis, executive vice president of VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services. "In October of 2003, more than 1.5 million domain names were registered which represents the highest number of registrations for any single month in the history of the Internet. We think these increased rates in registrations speak to the growing global usage of the Internet supported by services like multilingual capabilities and online sales that provide new opportunities for Internet commerce and communications."

VeriSign will host a Web conference on February 25, 2004 at 10:00 am EST to highlight the findings and field questions on the first two in the VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief series. To access the Web conference or to sign up for e-mail alerts when future briefs are published, visit http://www.verisign.com/domainbrief.

About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), delivers critical infrastructure services that make the Internet and telecommunications networks more intelligent, reliable and secure. Every day VeriSign helps thousands of businesses and millions of consumers connect, communicate, and transact with confidence. Additional news and information about the company is available at http://www.verisign.com.

For more information, contact: VeriSign Media Relations:Brian O'Shaughnessy, [email protected], 650-426-5270 VeriSign Investor Relations: Katie Bare, [email protected], 650-426-3241