You're correct mostly - my dates are off on that one issue - I should have
reread the paragraph. Unfortunately, none of these events are point
events.
The beginnings of the recompetition started in 1988 before I left DDN, the
actual award didn't happen until around the date you mentioned. But, it
was known this was going to happen and the DOD was getting increasing
concerned about paying for all those non-DOD registrations. This resulted
in a number of discussions with NSF which eventually resulted in the
Internic solicitation. The seeds were planted in 1988, but took quite a
while to grow.
As I recall (possibly faultily), the DDN NIC recompetition completed and
resulted in contract award sometime before the Internic contract was
awarded - this happened after I left DDN. I think the actual award of the
replacement DDN NIC contract was 91 - my language is misleading. By Sept
1989 (when I left DDN), the SRI contract had been placed on year by year
extension pending getting a whole lot of issues in line.