"We have geared up significantly over the last few years with investments, financial resources, development of other products and services," Network Solutions chief executive Gabriel Battista said in an interview.

Battista was in Singapore to attend a forum to debate a plan issued in June by the US commerce department to phase out the US government management of the Internet address system.

"We have advocated early 1997 that the competition is the best thing for the industry, Internet and for us," he said. Network Solutions won the contract to be the sole provider of the three top level domain names in 1992 and the contract runs out on September 30.

"The whole Internet has now evolved into a different situation. What made sense then does not make sense for the future," Battista said.

He said thecompany had introduced E-mail products, directory services and was building capabilities for electronic commerce. Competition and new ideas on how to use domain names would create more opportunities in the industry, Battista said.

He said one of Network Solutions' focuses was on small companies. Besides providing a firm with an on-line identity through a domain name, it was aiming to create other products "wrapped around the domain name" to sell to the same customer -- like personalised E-mail and electronic commerce software. The domain name market place, which could be more than 100 million, was largely untapped, Battista said.

He said Network Solutions would use partnerships, joint ventures, resellers and acquisitions to extend its reach.

At the moment, it was unclear how many new competitors in registration of domain names could emerge, he said. Initially these competitors were likely to come from the United States, he added.

Battista said 29 per cent of its domain registrations in its fiscalsecond quarter came from outside the United States.

In the second quarter ended June 30, 1998, Network Solutions registered 443,000 new Internet domain names, up 91 per cent from the same quarter of the previous year.

"I see the international segment continuing to grow in importance to Network Solutions. At some point in the future, there would be more '.com' customers outside the US than inside," he said.

Network Solutions took three to four years to grow its non-US. Registrations to 29 per cent of its overall registrations, he said.

Battista said he was optimistic that a new body to takeover the management of the Internet naming system could be defined by the end of September, when the US commerce wants an least an interim corporation to be in place.

The proposed plan has been debated in Brussels and Geneva and will move to Buenos Aires next week after Singapore.

Battista said one of the key points brought out in the meetings in Singapore was that it was not easy to exclude Asian governmentsfrom the management of the Internet. He said a wrap-up meeting to come up with compromises on areas where consensus had not been reached was likely.