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The battle between Afilias and Neustar to win the mandate for managing India’s .IN registry has intensified with the former alleging that the latter does not have the capability to do the job.
In a letter to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Afilias has said that Neustar did not have capability to offer domain names in 22 Indian regional languages at the time of bidding for the contract and therefore is not eligible.
Afilias has been managing the .IN registry since 2005 but now faces the prospect of losing the business as rival Neustar has emerged the lowest bidder for the contract floated by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). Neustar is a global player and manages several top-level domain registries including .US but experts are wary about the cost of transition if NIXI replaces Afilias.
Key requirements
One of the key requirements for the Indian contract is to have the ability to offer domain names in regional languages. Afilias has alleged that since Neustar did not have this capability in India, its bid should be disqualified on technical grounds.
“An unqualified bidder means that the entire programme of regional language IDNs will come to a grinding halt,” Afilias said in a letter to the IT Ministry.
A top official at the Ministry confirmed receiving the letter from Afilias. “We are examining the content of the letter and will take the observations into account at the time of awarding the contract,” said a senior government functionary on the condition of anonymity.
Amitabh Singhal, founder, NIXI, under whose stint as CEO .IN was liberalised and transformed into one of the most popular and successful domain names, had earlier told BusinessLine that transitioning of a critical internet resource such as India’s .IN ccTLD (country code top-level domain) is a sensitive matter involving the security and stability of the country’s DNS infrastructure. “Afilias has been managing the .IN registry since the beginning and they have put in place substantive local infrastructure for the same. So one needs to see if a new player meets all the requirements of having a localised but stable, highly secure and resilient infrastructure,”Singhal had said recently.
Neustar did not reply to an email sent by BusinessLine . Afilias and Neustar have been battling it out globally for similar projects.
Recently, Australian authorities changed the registry operator for .AU from Neustar to Afilias.
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