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Thursday, August 23, 2007

Parking domain


Following on from the last post, inside the Highways Agency booklet, there are contact details provided for comments about the scheme on page 2 - the Highways Agency seem to have based themselves at the Civic Hall.

But what is most intriguing is the email domain of the provided contact person susan.yates@a57mottram.co.uk. Enter that domain into Nominet's 'whois' service, and you get this:

Domain name:
a57mottram.co.uk

Registrant:
Carillion Plc

Registrant type:
Unknown

Registrant's address:
24 Birch Street
Wolverhampton
WV1 4HY
GB

Registrar:
NetNames Limited [Tag = NETNAMES]
URL: http://www.netnames.co.uk

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 23-May-2007
Renewal date: 23-May-2009
Yes, Carillion, the main contractor for the bypass. Seemingly joined at the hip with the Highways Agency. And notice when it was registered. Before the PI even started.

But what's the idea behind the domain a57mottram.co.uk? Are Carillion cybersquatting, banking on the road being built and 'parking' the domain to promote the new road and any new developments alongside it? Developers could pay a lot for that domain in future to help highlight any Ashton Moss-like towers of shit they want to construct in the area.

One thing is for sure - they are convinced enough that this road will go ahead to register the domain. A small cost for a big company, but then they speculate to accumulate.

1 comment:

Tom Hagen said...

It would appear that Carillion have been handed the contract for the construction of the bypass.

I asked a friend who is a director of a housing company about this and he said in his experience, it wouldn't be worth submitting a proposal yet because it's a very large project which is not set in stone. It would cost them tens of thousands to assess the cost and the time taken to construct the bypass. He said because of this, you will get companies submitting very rough guesstimates to save costs and it is likely that the bypass if ever built will be over budget and will take longer to build.

It would be interesting to see the proposals submitted by these construction companies and what they think the benefits of the bypass are and how much it will cost along with what grounds Carillion was awarded the contract.