dotPH

March 22, 2004

HON. VIRGILIO PE
Undersecretary
Department of Transportation and Communications
Columbia Tower
Ortigas Avenue, Wack Wack
Mandaluyong City 1555

Dear Mr. Pe

This is regarding your invitation to attend the Public Hearing on the Draft Guidelines on March 30. We regret that we will be unable to attend said hearing.

When DNS issues were first taken up by government 3 years ago, we attended every ITECC and DTI-sanctioned meeting with PhilDAC representatives, multi-agency task forces and BTRCP hearing. For well over a year, each invitation was accepted and diligently attended by myself or authorized representatives -- which cannot be said for the other participants.

However, our experience was that face-to-face showdowns with our detractors do little to further the process. As you are aware, some see the issues on an emotional and personal level, and our participation merely results in unseemly outbursts that get in the way of productive discussions.

Perhaps your hearing can identify problems, since none have been pointed out in the operation/administration of the PH domain despite our repeated requests dating back to last year.

Getting to the point where an operation is generally problem-free is not a trivial matter. Government must show that the drastic changes proposed in the Guidelines will actually improve the current system and not result in new, additional problems ? even that there is actually a need for such drastic changes in the first place.

We pointed out serious problems in the proposed guidelines over a month ago. This input has yet to be incorporated into the Guidelines or even discussed publicly. We hope that the NTC can respond to our input, hopefully publicly, so that the guidelines can be discussed on their merits.

This is especially important, given that hardly anyone in the NTC or the Advisory Board has had any experience with the Domain Name System, whereas we have been running the PH Domain for 15 years.

We will continue our participation in the process and remain hopeful that a just and comprehensive solution can be achieved.

Best regards,

JOSE EMMANUEL DISINI
.PH ccTLD Administrator

Back to News