LACTLD Statement on ccTLD. HN situation To the international community By this note, we would like to inform to the international community about the current situation in the ccTLD.HN, which is administrated by the RDS-HN , associated member of LACTLD , organization that inform us about this situation. The current Honduran government has informed to ccTLD .HN that must hand over the ccTLD operation due to Article 79B of the Reglament of the Telecommunications Act (of the year 2002). This rule says that "CONATEL controls the regulation and administration of the domains and IP directions within the national territory. CONATEL will be able to take the necessary measures so that the administration of domains and IP addresses can be executed through from other public or private institutions, for which agreements will be signed and the corresponding regulations will be issued." Last Friday, and based in the above-mentioned article, national authorities arrived at the ccTLD. hn office stating: "Until now, CONATEL has not signed any agreement with any public or private entity. Therefore it is necessary to order the institution, which has been managing and delegating domains. HN, to suspend the management immediately, given that it develops outside the provisions of Article 79B of the Reglament of the Framework Law for Telecommunications Sector". In the same way, they order ccTLD .HN "1. To immediately suspend all activities related to registration and delegation of new domain names under the domain .HN, and 2. To hand a list of domains .HN and records, that the institution have been conferred, to CONATEL." The Red de Desarrollo Sostenible - RDS (Sustainable Development Network) http://www.rds.org.hn maintains the operation of ccTLD. hn since April 1993, date when this organization received this delegation and, in July 2006, signed an Accountability Framework with ICANN (http://www.icann.org/en/cctlds/hn/hn-icann-af-20jul06.pdf), which explicitly recognizes that relationship and work. Furthermore, RDS is also a leading civil society organization that facilitates connectivity to Honduras as well as provides various tools and services to the community of Honduras and Central America and, for this reason, RDS is being recognized as a pioneer in the region. The management and operation of the DNS follow internationally accepted and recognized processes, primarily based on RFC 1591 . Because of the stability importance of the Internet global system and ccTLD work, RDS is due to its local and international community on the Internet. In addition, we indicate that the action that tries to carry out CONATEL is against of the constitutional guarantees and the guarantees of the Pact of San José de Costa Rica. Therefore, it violates the relationship that has been conducted peacefully and technically efficient and is based on existing contractual agreements and relationships. LACTLD expresses its strong concern regarding the events that have unfolded in the request made by the Government of Honduras to take in a sudden and abrupt way the operation .HN due to the fact that it will be detrimental to the users of domain name system in Honduras which primarily require stability for the adequate access of Internet resources. LACTLD is committed with its partners and members, and primarily seeks to maintain the stability of the Domain Name System for the correct running of the Internet. We hope that the wisdom will prevail between two sides in order to solve this delicate situation. Sincerely, Council of LACTLD Latin American and Caribbean ccTLD Association http://www.lactld.org More Information: contacto@lactld.org, contacto@rds.org.hn More Information: http://solidaridadrdshn.blogspot.com/ [1] ccTLD: country code top level domain [2] RDS-Hn: Red de Desarrollo Sostenible de Honduras (http://www.rds.org.hn) [3] LACTLD: Latin American and Caribbean ccTLD Association (http://www.lactld.org) [4] CONATEL: Telecomunication National Comission ( http://www.conatel.gob.hn) [5] ICANN: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (http://www.icann.org) [6] RFC 1591: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1591.txt