The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA) has reiterated that .ng, the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) remains a gold mine with potentials of accelerating economic development of the Nigeria.
Speaking at a recent .ng Media College at NiRA office in Lagos, the President, Reverend Sunday Folayan, underscored the role of the media and other professionals to educate members of the public on .ng domain name adoption.
According to him, with a population of over 190 million, internet penetration of over 98.3 million users and business population of over 37 million, the value of .ng domain is great and critical to job creation and poverty reduction.
Rev’ Folayan noted that the .tk domain name, for instance, which belongs to Tokelau, a country of 1.6 million population has well over 21 million .tk domain names sold out and generates one-sixth of its economic revenue, according to a report published by TechEconomy.ng.
He cited Germany as a second example, noting that with a population of about 83 million, .de (which is the country’s domain name) has over 20 million subscriptions already while Nigeria’s .ng domain name has only 106,000 as at June 2018, with 65 domain name registrars.
Rev’ Folayan said, “With a business population of over 37 million, .ng has a market potential of over N37billion annually (assuming an annual renewal rice of N1,000 per .ng domain).
“These are besides the potential businesses from additional registrars and subsequent jobs that will be created.
According to the NIRA President, the Association has witnessed a 50% year on year growth in the number of domain names registered and is poised to maintain the momentum, despite little support from the government.
Folayan listed challenges hindering adoption of .ng domain name to include low awareness among Nigerians, poor infrastructure, preference by many for foreign domain names, poor and inadequate policies to drive .ng domain name and insufficient manpower in the sector.
He said to address the problem of low awareness Informed the media college training for journalists and other professionals such that NIRA and the media can collaborate in an advocacy activities to raise the level of public understanding of the importance of .ng domain name adoption.
He said, “The media college workshop is to inform, educate and forge relationship with the media and build partnership to promote and harness the immense potentials in Nigeria’s .ng ccTLD name. It is also aimed at encouraging creativity and discourse on Domain Name Industry and its relevance in the Legal, ICT and Financial Industries in Nigeria”
The Vice President of NiRA, Muhammed Rudman made case for local hosting of data, arguing that funds spent on foreign hosting companies constitute capital flight.
“It put more strain on our foreign earnings. It slows the growth of local data centers and and delay development of new ones”.
Rudman said that hosting locally provides additional revenue opportunities to local ISPs and data centers which in turn creates more job and technical competencies.
According to the VP, data centers have direct and indirect impact on the economy – Job Creation, Tax , platform for other IT professionals.
“Local content hosted abroad has higher latency than if hosted locally – over 1000%. This makes data access (browsing) slow with poor quality of service. Internet becomes more expensive due to the distance, hence end users pay more. They take less capacity due to the high cost and hence cannot make good use of it. The process of making payment for data hosting becomes a hassle – due to the need to pay in USD,” Rudman said.
The training workshop had the theme “A World of Opportunities: tapping the opportunities in the DNS Industry” was well attended by representatives from major media houses including prints, broadcast, blogs/online.