Webcentral Group have offloaded its 50% share in the Australian registrar, aftermarket outlet and drop catcher NetAlliance, whose best-known brand is drop catcher and aftermarket outlet NetFleet, for A$500,000 (US$345,000) in cash to David Warmuz’s Trellian.
auDA have confirmed Notices of Breach have been issued to the NetAlliance group of registrars – NetAlliance, NetAlliance Domain No 1 And Ziphosting – whose best known brand is NetFleet, for failing to meet the Accreditation Criteria outlined in their respective Registrar Agreements. I broke this story in late October when sources told me the breach notice was originally issued, however auDA is only claiming they issued the breach last week. I also believe there has been action taken in Australia’s Federal Court recently by various parties involved in this saga.
A breach notice is believed to have been issued by the Australian domain name regulator auDA to a local registrar with many thousands of domain names under management impacted. It even has the potential to indirectly impact the recent 5GN takeover of Webcentral, according to rumours swirling around the Australian domain name industry this week. The reasons for the breach notice are unknown, but it needs to be complied with urgently, possibly as soon as Friday this week.
Webcentral, whose best known brand is Melbourne IT, has recommended shareholders accept a late bid from Australian telecommunications carrier 5G Networks rather than a revised bid from Web.com.
There has been a late bid for the Webcentral Group (which includes Melbourne IT) by 5G Networks, an Australian telecommunications carrier. But this has spurred the original bidder, Web.com, into substantially upping their original bid.
The ailing Webcentral Group, which has seen its stockmarket value plummet on the Australian Stock Exchange over the last 16 months, has been swallowed up by the Web.com Group which sees the end of Australian ownership of the country’s first domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.