Thanks Bruce. I echo those acknowledgements.

It seems to me that there are several threads wrapped up together here.

Firstly, the fact that NR is hosting (that is hosting not running) AUNIC for
auDA is the result of an open tender process. Amazingly, now that people in
the industry know the results they come forward to say that they could have
done the same thing  Fine, but they didn't submit a tender did they. This is
similar to now objecting to the Competition Panel's proposed model but not
having bothered to make a submission to the panel before it produced its
report.

Interestingly many of the same people who complained (loudly) about the
slowness and unreliability of AUNIC prior to the migration are also the ones
now complaining about the present situation. Churchill was right. There are
some people one can never satisfy.

The second issue is NetRegistry running "ads" on AUNIC. All the tenders
submitted were assessed and NetRegistry's was deemed to be the best. The key
is that AUNIC operates in a stable environment in an efficient and effective
manner. auDA's  role is set out in it's Constitution and includes "to
maintain and promote the operational stability and utility of the .au ccTLD
and to ensure a cost effective administration of the .au ccTLD and its
sub-domains". These are the main priorities upon which auDA operates. A
decision was made that the proposal put by NetRegistry was the best given
auDA's aims and priorities.

auDA is not an industry trade union or an industry protection body. It
operates for the benefit of the public. Now, I may be wrong, but as far as
I'm aware, I have received no complaints from members of the public about
NR's logo appearing on AUNIC. All complaints appear to be from competitors
and whilst I understand why such people would complain the reality is that
our main objective is to  operate a stable and efficient AUNIC not to
protect industry players.

Finally, a technical issue has been raised regarding the use of banner ads
by NetRegistry. I agree with some of the comments that have been made in
this respect and we are in the process of changing the way in which the logo
appears on AUNIC. I hope to have this finalised within a day or two.

Cheers

Chris Disspain
CEO - auDA
ceo§auda.org.au
+61-3-9226-9495
www.auda.org.au


-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Tonkin [mailto:Bruce.Tonkin§melbourneit.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 20 July 2001 11:06
To: 'dns§auda.org.au'
Subject: RE: [DNS] Advertising on AUNIC - Competitive neutrality?

Just as a follow up to Larry Bloch's message.

There may be some misconceptions about Melbourne IT's involvement in this
tender, especially with the statement in the Netregistry press release.  (ie
"NetRegistry wins contract against fierce competition, including Melbourne
IT").

Like NetRegistry, Melbourne IT also offered to host AUNIC for no charge in
response to the RFT tender.  The tender was released in May 2000, and the
AUNIC was migrated over to NetRegistry on 3 June 2001.  As auDA took a long
time to respond to the original tender respondents, Melbourne IT eventually
WITHDREW its offer due to the heavy load on production and development staff
in our growing international operations.  I don't know who else may have
responded to the auDA tender.

Note also that Melbourne IT provided considerable assistance at no charge
during the migration of AUNIC from Telstra to NetRegistry, especially with
regard to testing and debugging the usual problems that result from such a
move.  I understand that other registrars (e.g Robert Elz) gave advice to
auDA during the migration.  Cybersource (David Keegel and Con Zymaris) also
put a substantial effort (beyond the call of duty) into the migration.

So I would like to publicly thank all those how assisted in moving AUNIC to
its new location, and acknowledge the generosity of NetRegistry in providing
the hosting for AUNIC.

I hope others will recognise that it was a true industry cooperative effort
to improve the service levels of AUNIC, and not the result of any one
organisation.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin
Chief Technology Officer
Melbourne IT

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