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Is India’s largest registrar about to go titsup? And where the hell is ICANN?

Kevin Murphy, September 21, 2020, 18:16:40 (UTC), Domain Registrars

India’s largest independent domain name registrar appears to be “doing an AlpNames”, with many customers complaining about domains going dark, transfer codes not being issued, and customer support being unavailable for weeks.

Net 4 India, which claims to have 400,000 customers, has been in insolvency proceeds for over two years, but it’s only in the last couple months that the complaints have started piling up by the scores from disgruntled customers.

A major complaint is that renewals are not processed even after they are paid for, that transfer authcodes never arrive, that customer support never picks up the phone or replies to emails, and (occasionally) that the Net4 web site itself is down.

As we saw with AlpNames last year and RegisterFly back in the mists of time, These are all the warning signs of a registrar in trouble.

On its web site, Net4 prominently warns customers that its call centers are operating on a skeleton staff due to India’s coronavirus lockdown measures, which may account for the lack of support.

But there are reports that customers have visited the company’s offices in person to find them closed.

There’s been radio silence from the registrar. Even its Twitter account is private.

Many local commentators are pointing to the fact that Net4 is in protracted insolvency proceedings as the true underlying issue.

There have been calls for government intervention, action by .in registry NIXI, ICANN enforcement, and even the Indian equivalent of a class action lawsuit. This local cyber law blogger is all over it.

But what is ICANN doing about it?

Net4 was taken to a quasi-judicial insolvency court in 2017 by a debt-recovery company called Edelweiss over the rupee equivalent of about $28 million of unpaid loans from the State Bank of India.

ICANN has been aware of this fact since at least April 2019, when it started calling the registrar for an explanation.

Under the standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement, being in insolvency for over 30 days is grounds for unilateral termination by ICANN.

ICANN could terminate the agreement and transfer all of Net4’s gTLD domain names to a different registrar pretty much at will — all the registrant data is in escrow. This would not protect Net4’s many thousands of .in registrants of course.

ICANN suspended Net4’s RAA in June last year, but Net4 somehow managed to talk its way out of it. ICANN later rescinded the suspension on the proviso that the registrar provide monthly updates regarding its insolvency.

Net4’s cure period has been extended three times by ICANN. The latest expired July 31 this year.

At least one ICANN staffer is on the case, however. ICANN’s head of India Samiran Gupta has recently been reaching out to customers on Twitter, offering his email address and assistance getting in contact with Net4 staff, apparently with some success.

But Net4 had 95,000 gTLD names under management at the last count (though it’s been hemorrhaging thousands per month) so this individual approach won’t go very far.

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