Zamnet’s sleepy accounts receivable department has again risen from its seldom-interrupted slumber to suspend random dot-zm domains. This time they have suspended about 25 per cent of the dot-zm domains that NinerNet hosts — all without a shred of notice to any of their registrants (our hosting clients).
This results in days of downtime while these businesses — some with hundreds of employees and many hundreds of customers across southern Africa — scramble to get a few kwachas to Zamnet’s offices, and then Zamnet takes their time processing the payments. If Zamnet had bothered invoicing for the renewal of these domains in the first place this would likely have never happened. This is not the first time this has occurred; in June 2013 another significant tranche of dot-zm domains were taken offline by Zamnet until registrants coughed up extortionate sums of money (sometimes thirteen years’ worth!) to pay for all the years in which Zamnet didn’t bother to invoice for the renewal of the domains. While that’s the only example we have documented on this blog, it’s not the only example of Zamnet causing dot-zm domains to fail.
NinerNet, in partnership with registered ISP Preworx, are trying to become accredited with ZICTA to register and manage dot-zm domain registrations so that this kind of uncertainty and lack of reliability with dot-zm domain registrations and renewals can be stopped, at least for our clients and those who choose to register their dot-zm domains with us. We made the application in June 2019, but progress on the application has been held up by additional, undocumented steps we have had to take. Only yesterday we happened to submit additional paperwork in support of our application, and this morning we followed up with a complaint about this action by Zamnet and made clear that such an action would never happen under our watch. It is unclear to us what obstacles will be placed in our path now, but it is the incompetence demonstrated by incumbent registrars like Zamnet that drives us forward to our goal.
If you’d like to voice support for the application by Preworx to become a dot-zm domain registrar, we encourage you to voice this support through the ZICTA website. Thank-you.
