NSI Plans New Directory To Fight Rivals.

Domain name registrar Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) is embarking on a new life, and it plans to take its customers along. The company was the only Internet domain name registrar for .com, .org, and .net addresses in the world -- under a contract with the U.S. government -- until this week. Monday saw competition open up to five rivals including America Online, the largest ISP in the world. A flood of others registrars is due to follow in July. But NSI has plans beyond straight registration. The company aims to launch a service in June called the dot com directory. It is expected to offer a search facility, which, NSI said, will be a lot more efficient than a search engine. NSI senior vice president sales and marketing Douglas Wolford said the dot com directory would allow searches based on company name or the name of a product, or a phone number. It was built on NSI_s database of 4.2 million customers, all of whom will get a free listing in the directory unless they opted out, Wolford said.