Hi Larry,

Sorry for the late contribution, catching up on old emails.

Quoting Larry Bloch on Friday June 09, 2006:
| 
| auDA's management of the tender process resulted in an uncompetitive field.
| This was because to any major potential tendered, I believe it was clear
| that auDA and Chris in particular were unlikley to look favourably on any
| tender other than AR's. There were a number of international registry
| operators who were very keen to bid (Verisign, Neulevel) , but failed to do
| so. I was told directly by them that the reason why they didn't submit a bid
| was that they felt it was a done deal, that the tender was structured to
| ensure AR won and that bidding would be a waste of time as a result. 

Strange. Another opinion I heard from a major registry operator was
that the bidding would be too competitive, and the resulting margins
therefore too small, to worry about entering a bid. Which in essence is
the opposite to what you heard.

(I'll add I did hear the opinion you mention above from at least one
prospective bidder, but it certainly wasn't universally expressed.)

In the interests of improving the tender process, which would be a
welcome development, what were the specific criticisms and suggested
remedies that would fix the problem?

kim