Can this be right?

'Belfast Telegraph to go offline though (sic) inept IT' - thunders a Scottish-based business site.

Platinax claims that the Bel Tel has let its domain name expire. And now that it has expired the domain will inevitably get snapped up by automated software. The bottomline is that the Bel Tel website (and less regrettably its Cillit Bang-style newscast) could go offline in a couple of days, according to the story.

Can this be right? The Platinax website (administrator, Brian Turner) reports that local search engine optimalisation & marketing business Britecorp Ltd (director, Brian Turner) noticed this and offered to get the domain returned for free.

The report goes on to say that the head of IT at the Bel Tel lost the rag. No explanation why. Could that guy have misunderstood the generosity of the approach to be some kind of blackmail/ransom demand?

Further attempts by Britecorp to contact the Bel Tel were met with silence.

So are we about to lose the Belfasttelegraph.co.uk to interweb domain poachers? Will belfasttelegraph.co.uk suffer the fate of a http://www.belfasttelegraph.com/?

What will this mean for advertising revenue across the company if it loses its web traffic? What will this mean for Bel Tel services like Jobfinder/loadzajobs etc? And professional reputation and reliability… ?

This could prove to be an enormously costly and damaging oversight… if it proves to be true. I'm keeping an eye on this one.