The gossip on BT domain grab fiasco
Rat Salad Park anagram lifts spirits
Posted in Music and Media, 23rd November 2000 13:14 GMT
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The Reg has received some interesting correspondence from a former BT employee shedding further light on the telco's failure to register the domain of its newly branded hi-tech campus, Adastral Park.
It concurs with other anecdotal evidence that senior BT managers were to blame for the cock-up, which ultimately led to the sacking of BT contractor, Ric Hayman.
"The interesting thing about the whole story is that Ric Hayman was probably just the quickest off the mark," writes our mole, who's asked to remain anonymous.
"Some "bright spark" sent out a site-wide email smugly describing the process whereby they'd come up with the name (four senior managers locked in a five star hotel for four days, don't you know) before triumphantly announcing the result of this high-powered cogitation.
"And every person, contractor and otherwise, hit the Internet to see if they'd been smart enough to secure the domain names before the announcement.
"As luck would have it, someone already had. As we were later to find out, it was a superfast contractor who had been immediately sacked (Ric, obviously).
"At no point did I ever hear of [those involved] considering the possibility that they had been pretty boneheaded in not securing the domain BEFORE making the announcement. Doh!" ®
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