ICANN produced a report in 2001 that suggests this was successful. Here's the data from that report protrayed graphically.
Fig 2 - Domain names totals, by registrar
Looks good on paper. In only a year ICANN devolved the NSI (now Verisign) monopoly. At least that's what these numbers, supplied by ICANN suggest. However:
In 1996 Jon Postel noted there was "widespread dissatisfaction" with the .COM monopoly. There still is. In 1999 ICANN creatd an MLM-like sales channel network (that meets the FTC criteria for "a franchise") and created 900+ "registrars" - but now there is "widespread dissatisfaction" with the dominant .COM registrar. A recent Slashdot story about a flaky registrar turned into an all out derision of the dominant registrar and despite the existence of 900+ registrars, one person commented "are they really all bad? Can anyone recommend a good one" to which the names of two companies were offered in response.
2 out of 900 is not a figure to be proud of. While the Slashdot story is only one data point it does suggest a corroboration of a suspected trend that of all the names and numbers that need to be registered for the various things that make the Internet usable, only ICANN registrars stand out.
Fig 7 - Total domain name sales by TLD percentage: 2009
Source: http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/See as a bar chart
Fig 9 - The top 15 registrars. Source: Enom
