Gabon has liberalised its national domain and adopts an innovative business model by giving its .GA domain names away for free. Today the My GA Registry opened up registration for .GA domains.
My GA – the Gabon domain name – is operated by the Agence Nationale des Infrastructures Numeriques et des Frequences (ANINF) who pledges to make this national resource as open and easy to use as any generic Top Level Domain, while carrying the Gabonese identity on the Internet.
Free domain names will be offered to all Internet users in Gabon and in other countries from today onwards. There will be no restrictions to registrations of free domains and anyone can claim their own .GA domain. Free .GA domains work exactly like any other extension and can be renewed each registration period at no charge.
In accordance with international best practices, Gabon also completed a Sunrise and Landrush period, allowing trademark owners to register their corresponding domain names and protect their intellectual property in the .GA namespace.
“Gabon is working hard to become one of the leading IT hubs in Africa,” says Cyriaque Kouma, DIG project manager at ANINF.
“By giving our .GA domain names away for free we can encourage businesses and individuals in Gabon to develop their Web presence and Web applications and in turn diversify our economy and promote e-commerce. This strategy is an important part of our country’s vision to develop the Digital Gabon.”
The .GA Registry uses a global AnyCast Cloud, with local nodes in Libreville and in several other countries, to ensure excellent performance and continuous uptime of all domains worldwide. This AnyCast Cloud ties directly into the systems of Freenom, a company known for its expertise and knowledge in the sector, and who works alongside ANINF in this ambitious project.
“Thanks to the AnyCast technology our GA Top Level Domain is now one of the most stable in the world,” Kouma continues.
“In the past there were several outages of the entire .GA domain, which hurt the reputation of the registry. But that is behind us now, and our users can rest assured that their domains will always work no matter what.”
The reintroduction of My GA in 2013 coincides with the “Year of the Internet” in Gabon. Local businesses and individuals will soon be able to take advantage of the increased connectivity from the new ACE oceanic cable, which will help spur the growth of the Gabonese IT sector.
Domain names are available on a first-come, first-served basis.