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The US said it intends to relinquish the control it held on the Internet's domain-name system to a private group, Bloomberg reported.

Surrendering control of the system that assigns website addresses to a group not linked to the government is the final move in the thrust to put the management of the system, seen as the very backbone of the Internet, to an independent entity. Since 1998, the system has been managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN under a contract with the US government that will end next year, the report said.

ICANN, which is now asked to gather interested groups worldwide to come up with a proposal on how the shift will be handled, said it intends to initiate consultations in a Singapore meeting scheduled for March 24.

ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer Fadi Chehade told reporters, "We thank the U.S. government for its stewardship, for its guidance over the years. And we thank them today for trusting the global community to replace their stewardship with appropriate oversight mechanisms."

The US has been under pressure from the international community to surrender control of the system that uniquely identifies the websites so that Internet users can find what they want on the vast online world. European Union nations have urged that the system be supervised from representatives worldwide, a call that has taken on more relevance in the wake of reports of more cyber attacks, censorship happening in some nations and allegations of government surveillance, the report said.

However, Chehade said the transfer of the management of the system is not happening because of the information given by Edward Snowden regarding the surveillance operations of the US National Security Agency. He said in the conference call, "The world wants to participate increasingly in how we shape it together. That's why now."