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Telco billed $2.7 million for failing to renew domain

Kevin Murphy, October 2, 2017, Domain Tech

A US telecommunications provider has agreed to pay $2.7 million after an emergency service went offline because it forgot to renew a domain name.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, Utah-based Sorenson Communications saw its “video relay service” go offline for two days in June 2016 after a domain was not renewed.
The service is basically a 911 emergency calls replaced designed for people with hearing or speech problems.
The settlement (pdf) describes the scenario like this:

Sorenson.com is a domain name Sorenson uses to provide access to SVRS. On the morning of June 6, 2016, Sorenson experienced a VRS Service Interruption that resulted from a preventable, internal operational failure.10 This failure led the domain registration for Sorenson.com to expire and be deactivated. After the deactivation occurred and before Sorenson could correct the situation, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) updated their records to reflect that the domain was expired. If a user’s ISP updated its records while the domain was shown as expired, that user could not make or receive calls routed through Sorenson.com — including VRS, 911, Dial-Around, and Point-to-Point calls — during at least part of the outage.
Upon discovery of the VRS Service Interruption, Sorenson took immediate steps to correct the problem and notify callers. Once the domain name was reactivated, each caller’s ISP had to take certain steps to ensure that calls were routed through Sorenson.com. To expedite this process, Sorenson reached out to multiple large ISPs, such as Verizon and Comcast, and posted information about the VRS Service Interruption on its website11 and social media outlets. The VRS Service Interruption continued for some callers through the morning of June 8, 2016.

The $2.7 million charge is a repayment of a reimbursement of the same amount paid out by the nation Telecommunications Relay Service Fund.
Sorenson has agreed to pay a more modest $252,000 in formal penalties to the FCC for its indiscretion.
Still, as domain renewal fumbles go, it’s got to be one of the biggest facepalms we’ve seen for a while.

US confirms Neustar to lose $475m-a-year contract

Kevin Murphy, March 30, 2015, Domain Registries

Neustar still seems set to lose a critical US government contract that provides half of its annual revenue.
The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously last week to begin talks with rival contract bidder Telcordia, saying it will save the US consumer hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Since 1997, Neustar has administered the telephone number portability system in the US. It’s not related to domain names.
Neustar, which also runs .us, .biz and .co, made $474.8 million from the deal in 2014, 49% of its annual revenue.
Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a statement:

Should we now declare Telcordia the next local number portability administrator? When you compare the numbers, the answer is clear. Last year, the current contract cost about $460 million. In contrast, Telcordia bid less than $1 billion for a seven-year term — that’s less than $143 million per year. That’s substantial savings for the American public.

Neustar told Bloomberg that the ruling was “procedurally defective” and that the company is “considering all options to address the significant flaws.”
Some kind of legal action to attempt to block the negotiations seems possible.
The company has also initiated a share buy-back to prop up its stock in light of the bad news.