Uninett AS is a

state-owned State ownership, also called public ownership or government ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, property, or enterprise by the national government of a country or state, or a public body representing a community, as opposed to ...

company responsible for Norway's

National Research and Education Network A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country. It is usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backb ...

. The organization develops and operates the national research network in Norway. The center of operations in located at Teknobyen Innovation Centre in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; ), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros, and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2022, it had a population of 212,660. Trondheim is the third most populous municipality in Norway, and is ...

. Uninett has approximately 100 employees. All Norwegian universities and most of the public colleges are connected to Uninett. Any non-commercial research or educational institution such as libraries, archives and schools may be connected for a yearly fee. The CEO of Uninett is Tom Røtting.

History

Uninett was established in 1976 as a project based on funding from the Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and was headquartered at SINTEF in Trondheim. The work was continued as a research project in

SINTEF SINTEF (, "The Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research"), headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, is an independent research organization founded in 1950 that conducts contract research and development projects. SINTEF has 2000 employees fr ...

, before Uninett was established as an operating organization for the academic data network in Norway. Uninett has been responsible for the administration of the .no domain on the internet ever since it was established as the

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...

in 1987. After five years as a project organization, the

joint-stock company A joint-stock company (JSC) is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership). Shareho ...

Uninett AS was founded in 1993. In 1999, parts of Uninett's operations were separated as a separate company, Uninett FAS (Joint Administrative Systems). FAS was to develop technical solutions for efficient operation of administrative services for the higher education sector. In 2002 and 2003, two more subsidiaries were established, Uninett ABC and Uninett Norid. ABC was to use Uninett's competence and experience for web development for the other educational institutions in Norway, with emphasis on primary and secondary schools. Norid was to continue the administration of domain names under the .no domain. The subsidiary Uninett Sigma, was established in 2004. Sigma has later changed its name to Uninett Sigma2, and coordinates heavy computing and storage in the higher education sector. Following a request from the Ministry of Education and Research to pool the state resources within ICT in basic education, Uninett ABC was separated from the group at the turn of the year 2009/2010. Uninett FAS was wound up as a separate company on 31 December 2011. On February 4, 2021, the Solberg government announced a reorganization of knowledge management under the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

. This included merging Uninett into the new agency Sikt, which began operations on January 1, 2022, led by Roar Olsen, former director of Uninett and Unit.

References

External links

Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Uninett Companies based in Trondheim Internet service providers of Norway Government-owned companies of Norway Government research Mass media companies established in 1976 National research and education networks 1976 establishments in Norway