CICT appoints new head to manage the '.ph' spat

By Alexander F. Villafania INQ7.net

The Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) has appointed a new director to oversee the still ongoing “.ph” spat.CICT Deputy Commissioner Lorenzo Formoso III, appointed by the Office of the President to his post last month, has been assigned to lead the meetings on the .ph redelegation proceedings.

Formoso takes over the responsibility from Commissioner Damien Domingo Mapa, who is currently busy with several other CICT concerns that includes membership in the congressional technical working group on the automated election proposal.

Formoso was formerly the chief legal and compliance officer of the mobile services operator Chikka.

CICT Chairperson Virgilio Peña told reporters that Formoso has an extensive legal background in the IT industry, which made him a prime choice to head the .ph discussions.

“So far, we’re still discussing with group members of the .ph debate on the re-delegation. We don’t need to start from scratch since Formoso is already updated on the issue,” Peña said.

Peña said that he discussed re-delegation of the .ph top-level domain with Paul Twomey, president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers” (ICANN). Twomey was open to the possibility of the re-delegation but recommended that its stakeholders find a “less-disruptive” way of transferring power.

“It means we have ascertain .ph clients are not happy with the management of the domain and then we could proceed to ask ICANN to re-delegate it. That is why we’re looking at ways to bring this to a win-win-win situation for the current .ph administrator, the government and the local Internet users,” Peña said.

The .ph domain name is currently administered by DotPH owned by Joel Disini. DotPH acts as both administrator and registrar of .ph, an arrangement questioned by many Internet users who say that these two responsibilities should be split into two and administered accordingly.