The waiting game between the Philippine government and the current administrator of the ".ph" domain name is slowly turning into a media war.

In two open letters published recently in local newspapers, Joel Disini, chief executive of DotPH Domains Inc., criticized the government for its inefficient management of the "gov.ph" and "edu.ph" domain names.

The letters were addressed to Commission on Information Communication Technology (CICT) chairman Virgilio Peña. Disini criticized the CICT chair for what he called the "unacceptable" performance of the two state-run domain name registries.

In his letter, Disini presented data from an independent US firm contracted by DotPH to monitor the server downtimes of its registry along with that of ?gov.ph? and ?edu.ph.?

The Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI), an agency attached to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), administers the ?gov.ph? domain name, while ?edu.ph? is hosted by ph.net.

The DotPH data, which covered the December 2004 period, indicated the amount of time each of the three registries? DNS and Web servers failed to function properly, resulting in the inaccessibility of Websites whose URLs carry these domain name extensions.

"Irrelevant"

Reacting to the open letter, Peña told Computerworld Philippines in a phone interview that the data Disini presented was ?irrelevant? since the guidelines the government has released cover all three registries -- ?.ph?, ?gov.ph? and ?edu.ph.?

To resolve the long-running controversy surrounding the ?.ph? country code, the government recently came up with new guidelines. These guidelines mandate, among others, the separation of the domain name?s administration and registration functions ? two roles which Disini?s DotPH currently performs (Computerworld Philippines, Feb. 14, 2005).

?Whatever improvements we come up with will apply to all three registries,? Peña said.

Taking a swipe at the DotPH head, Peña said Disini is barking up the wrong tree since he did not author the guidelines. The guidelines, he pointed out, were drafted by an advisory board that included representatives from the University of the Philippines, Philippine Electronics and Telecommunications Foundation (PETEF) and Philippine Internet Commerce Society (PICS).

?I just gave the directive to promulgate the guidelines,? Peña said.

Downtime

Disini pointed to the large disparity in server downtimes between DotPH and the registries for gov.ph and edu.ph., and warned that this may be an indicator of the government"s inability to efficiently deliver public services over the Internet once it takes over the management of the ?.ph? domain name.

The embattled DotPH chief also criticized the government for failing to "fix" technical inefficiencies regarding the gov.ph and edu.ph domain names, saying it is more interested in attempting to "shut down" DotPH as the sole registry for ".ph."

Referring to the current stalemate in the talks to resolve the ?.ph?domain issue, Disini again mentioned that the CICT has yet to identify the problems in the current ".ph" registry. He previously asked the government to identify problems in DotPH"s registry before undertaking the "redelegation" process.

The new guidelines issued by the government mandate the redelegation of the ".ph" registry to a different entity. The CICT has been tasked to implement the redelegation proccess. In line with this, it has asked DotPH to choose whether is will continue to be the administrator of the ?.ph? domain name or limit its functions to just that of a registry.