EMIL Avanceña is an amiable sort of fellow who can speak calmly on the most controversial of issues. This quality has stood him in good stead over the years in his job as the corporate communications officer of DotPH, the current administrator of the PH domain. It can’t be an easy job. DotPH, which administers the country’s Internet domain, treats the shared, public resource as a private asset, with no accountability to the people or their representatives.
AL Alegre, a fixture in civil society circles, reminds me of a bulldog. This isn’t a reference to Al’s heft, but rather his tenacity. Once Al sinks his teeth into an issue, he’s unlikely to let go. One of these issues that I’ve written extensively about is the need to reform the .PH domain, a campaign that Al’s Foundation for Media Alternatives has revived.
“I can write that you’re looking prosperous,” I told Gerry Kaimo, who turned 50 over the weekend.
He blurted an expletive. “That’s all I need!” he said. “I’ll have creditors lined up around the block!”
A few months after settling his six-year trademark suit with the giant phone company, Kaimo looked relaxed as he welcomed guests to his birthday bash at the Casa Armas in the Podium. A few of his friends from the technology industry kidded him about the sizable settlement everyone assumed he received. Outside of a few jokes, however, Gerry was mum about the deal he reached with the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), which sued him in 1999 over the PLDT.com domain name.
Although few people will remember it today, Kaimo had used the PLDT.com site to attack the phone company’s policies, and to rally support against its plan to meter all local phone calls, a move that would have driven up the cost of dial-up Internet.
WHEN Ver Peña stepped down as chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) last April, he left a bit of unfinished business.
The CICT’s mandate to transform itself into a full-blown department had been frustrated several times by politics and competing priorities in Congress. A landmark decision to institute reforms in the way the PH domain is managed was set aside after the commissioner who was assigned to pursue the case squandered an entire year doing almost nothing about it. An ICT roadmap that the various CICT groups and private sector representatives put together in June was still a draft by September, with no official standing or value. This is probably just as well.
VER PEÑA has resigned as chairman of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT), which oversees ICT development in the Philippines. His departure creates some uncertainty over the direction the agency and the industry will take.
The debate over the PH domain is a clash of ideas, not personalities, and the issue is important because it determines how much local users must pay of a .PH address on the Internet and what level of service they get. Stripped of all personality distractions, the root of the PH debate is one simple question: “Who has the right to determine how the Philippine domain works?”
In all the years I’ve covered the IT industry, the PH administrator, DotPH Inc., has never released a definitive figure for the number of registered PH domains. If you were to ask any government official who ought to know, chances are he won’t be able to tell you.
The country’s biggest association of online businesses will support the appointment of a new administrator of the Philippine (.PH) domain. In a draft position paper to the government, the Philippine Internet Commerce Society urges the appointment of a non-stock, non-profit entity to manage the database of Internet names and addresses using the “ph” country domain.
Why is it three times more expensive to register a Philippine domain on the Internet? To register a Philippine Web site, I’d have to pay $35 a year while a generic COM site costs only $9.95. DotPH, the administrator of the PH domain, says the high price is related to costs. It also says the price is high because not enough companies register Philippine domains. I’m not convinced that’s all there is to it.
DOTPH, the administrator of the PH domain, seems intent on talking its way out of impending restrictions on its operations, TechTimes learned.
Last week, the three-year-old campaign for PH reforms reached a milestone with the release of “Guidelines in the Administration of the PH Domain Name” by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). The official document imposes, for the first time, some accountability on the PH administrator.
Guidelines to govern how the Philippine Internet domain (PH) is run may be released as early as this week.
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2009 Chin Wong.
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