Although still one of the lowest in terms of registration, Nigeria’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) name, .ng, has emerged one of the fastest growing in the world. According to Verisign, the US domain name administrator, global growth of ccTLD domains is 3.2 per cent year over year.
The country, according to the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has seen a growth rate of not less than 30 per cent year over year. As at the end of December 2018, active registrations on the country’s domain name stood at 131,100 compared with 101, 695 recorded at the same period of 2017.
Speaking on the growth rate, NiRA’s President, Rev. Sunday Folayan, said the country’s record was ten times more than the global growth rate. “This is a clear testimony to the work the various stakeholders have been doing to grow the numbers and we are not going to relent. On our part, we will continue to work hard to position the Association as well as the Registry in the year 2019. We hope to complete the work on the review of the NiRA Constitution, and also carry out key Infrastructure upgrade, to keep the Registry optimal” he said.
The country’s internet asset which is being managed by NiRA, has witnessed remarkable growth over the last three years, even though many Nigerian websites are still registered with the foreign domain names. However, NiRA said its was to achieve 1 million active web addresses on the .ng domain name in the next five years. The NiRA President explained that the growth has been fuelled by two things, which according to him are the fact that Nigeria are beginning to realise that it cost money to register a non .ng domains. He added that the fall in the value of naira has made it clear that it is capital flight to register non .ng domain names.
Giving global trend of domain name registrations, Verisign in its third quarter 2018 report recently released, said the third quarter of the year closed with approximately 342.4 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of approximately 2.6 million domain name registrations, or 0.8 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2018. It added that domain name registrations have grown by approximately 11.7 million, or 3.5 percent, year over year.
“Total country-code TLD (ccTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 149.3 million at the end of the third quarter of 2018, a decrease of approximately 0.5 million domain name registrations, or 0.3 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2018. ccTLDs increased by approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.2 percent, year over year”
Verisign also disclosed that the .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 151.7 million domain name registrations in the domain name base at the end of the third quarter of 2018, an increase of approximately 2.0 million domain name registrations, or 1.3 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2018. “The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of approximately 5.9 million domain name registrations, or 4.0 percent, year over year. As of Sept. 30, 2018, the .com domain name base totalled approximately 137.6 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base totalled approximately 14.1 million domain name registrations” it said.
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