CICT expects a new ‘.ph’ administrator before year’s end

THE PHILIPPINES will have a new “.ph” Internet domain administrator before the end of 2005, the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) said last week.

CICT Commissioner Dondi Mapa said that a technical working group formed to implement the new guidelines for the administration of the “.ph” domain has started drafting a “sponsorship package” this week, to be sent to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) soon.

ICANN is the worldwide body that supervises Internet domain names.

This package or agreement is the first step towards the re-delegation process, which the group initiated on Thursday, Mapa said. It would take ICANN one to two months to review the agreement, he added.

It would take another four to five months before ICANN comments on the package, agrees to it, and assigns a “delegee” to enact the redelegation.

“We hope to have a '.ph' administrator that meets all the provisions of the guidelines by end of this year,” Mapa said.

Joel Disini, current administrator of '.ph', has refused to acknowledge these new guidelines requiring him to choose between being a registrar and a registry of the country Internet domain, saying that the guidelines are “onerous” and based on “wrong information.”

“There is a serious problem with the ‘choice’ that is being forced on us. The Administrator is neither the Registry nor the Registrar. It never has been, and never will be! The ‘choice’ is based on wrong information and is indicative of how seriously flawed the Guidelines are. For Mr. Peña to keep insisting that we make a "choice", despite the fact that such a choice is impossible, is a dangerous sign of inflexibility,” Disini wrote in his blog.

Virgilio Peña is the chairman of the CICT.

Mapa however stressed that the guidelines have been promulgated, and the technical working group created by the CICT is taking steps to implement it despite Disini's non-compliance.

“He can go to court for an injunction if he can show that the guideline is wrong,” Mapa said when asked what options are left for Disini.

But until Disini can prove that these guidelines are indeed wrong, the CICT will proceed with the re-delegation process, Mapa said.