Neustar
Neustar, Inc. is an American technology company that provides real-time information and analytics for the Internet, risk, digital performance, and defense, telecommunications, entertainment, and marketing industries, and also provides clearinghouse and directory services to the global communications and Internet industries. Neustar is the domain name registry for.biz,.us,.co,.nyc top-level domains, and.in.
Until the end of 2018, the company was also a North American Numbering Plan Administrator under behalf of the Federal Communications Commission, a role continued from its founder, Lockheed Martin. Their first contract was granted in 1997 and was renewed under its spun-off in 1999, 2004, and 2012. Since 2019, in this role it was replaced by Somos, Inc.
History
Neustar was incorporated in Delaware in 1998. Neustar started as a business unit within Lockheed Martin Corporation. It was spun off to keep the neutrality that was essential to its original core contract with the nation's telecommunications providers.In November 2006, Neustar completed the acquisition of Followap, Inc., a U.K.-based enabler of mobile instant messaging services.
In 2010, Neustar named Lisa Hook as president and chief operating officer. In January 2010, The Washington Post reported that under Hook's leadership, Neustar was chosen by a consortium of Hollywood studios and technology executives to manage a system whereby consumers could access movies and other video entertainment from multiple digital devices. This system was named "UltraViolet".
In October 2011, Neustar acquired TARGUSInfo.
On October 30, 2013, Neustar announced it purchased Aggregate Knowledge, a seven-year-old ad-tech firm, for $119 million.
In March 2014, Neustar acquired.CO Internet for $109 million.
On September 9, 2015, Neustar entered into an Asset Purchase Agreement with Transaction Network Services, Inc. for their caller authentication assets.
On June 21, 2016, Neustar announced its intention to separate into two independent publicly traded companies. These plans were abandoned when Golden Gate Capital and GIC announced plans to buy out all Neustar public shares for approximately $2.9 billion on December 14, 2016.
On July 22, 2016, Neustar lost the NPAC contract to Ericsson subsidiary Telcordia. Neustar had administered the number portability system since 1997. The local-number-portability administrator was created to handle the Number Portability Administration Center, which enables users to take their phone numbers with them when they switch service providers. The NPAC manages the routing of all calls and texts for more than 650 million U.S. and Canadian phone numbers for more than 2,000 carriers.
On August 8, 2017, Neustar announced the completion of its acquisition by Golden Gate Capital and GIC.
On July 23, 2018, Neustar announced that its board of directors appointed Charles Gottdiener as president and chief executive officer, succeeding Lisa Hook, who served as president and chief executive officer and a member of the Neustar board of directors since 2010. Hook will continue to serve on the Neustar board.
On October 25, 2018, Neustar announced that it acquired Verisign's security services customer contracts. This includes DDoS protection, DNS firewall, and managed and recursive DNS services customer contracts.
In January 2019, Neustar acquired TRUSTID, a caller authentication and fraud prevention systems provider for contact centers.
In June 2019, was considered a market leader DMP by Forrester.
On April 6, 2020, GoDaddy announced that it would be acquiring Neustar's domain name registry business. The new service will be called GoDaddy Registry. The deal is expected to be finalized in Q2 2020.
Business
Upon its incorporation in 1998, and continuing until 2015, the original business of Neustar was the administration of the North American Numbering Plan, the maintenance of the system of directories and databases that manage the telephone area codes and central office prefixes in North America. This enables the routing of calls among thousands of competing communications service providers. Neustar also provided clearinghouse services to emerging CSPs, including Internet service providers, mobile network operators, cable television operators, and voice over Internet protocol service providers.Neustar offers internal and external managed Domain name system services that play a role in directing and managing traffic in the Internet, cloud-based DDoS attack protection and website performance management tools. Neustar manages the authoritative directories for the.us and.biz Internet domains, and acts as the worldwide "registry gateway" for China's.cn and Taiwan's.tw Internet domains outside of these two countries. Neustar also provides back end registry services for.co Top Level Domain. Neustar manages a collection of these directories that maintain addresses to direct, prioritize and manage Internet traffic, and find and resolve Internet queries and top-level domains on behalf of its enterprise customers. Neustar serves as the provider of registry services and manages directories of similar resources, or addresses, that its customers use for access and connectivity.
Neustar previously operated the authoritative directory for U.S. Common Short Codes, part of the short messaging service relied upon by the U.S. wireless industry, and provides solutions used by mobile network operators to enable mobile instant messaging for their end users. CTIA granted that contract to Iconectiv, who took over providing Common Short Code Registry Services on January 1, 2016.
Neustar offered a "Digital Rights Locker" for Hollywood studios, consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers looking for Digital restrictions management, such as UltraViolet and the planned Mobile DTV Trust Authority Open Mobile Video Coalition. UltraViolet was shut down on July 31, 2019.