My GA registry has opened up registration for .GA domains for free. My GA – the Gabon domain name – is operated by the Agence Nationale des Infrastructures Numériques et des Fréquences (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.

This move comes in after Freedom Registry took up operating the TLDs (Top Level Domains) for Mali, Gabon and Central African Republic, mid this year, aiming at creating international interest in them by providing free domains.

“We got a deal with Mali, Gabon and Central Africa Republic and hopefully we can get other countries to sign with us. Our thinking is that we should offer domains free then make money from other services,” Joost Zuurbier said.

Free domain names will be offered to all internet users in Gabon and in other countries with no restrictions to registration and anyone can claim their own .GA domain. The domains work exactly like any other extension and can be renewed each registration period at no charge.

 

“Gabon is working hard to become one of the leading IT hubs in Africa. By giving our .GA domain names for free we want to 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.” said Cyriaque Kouma, DIG Project Manager at ANINF.

 

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.

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 project.

“Thanks to the AnyCast technology our GA Top Level Domain is now one of the most stable in the world. 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.” Cyriaque Kouma continued to say.

The reintroduction of My GA in 2013 coincides with Gabon’s “Year of the Internet”. Local businesses and individuals can now take advantage of the increased connectivity from the new ACE oceanic cable, which will help spur the growth of the Gabonese IT sector.

The domain names are available on a “first-come, first-served” basis. Resellers are welcome to sign up and provide further domain name distribution. Further details on the launch, FAQs and the reseller registration procedure are available on www.my.ga.

There is optimism that more people and business entities will take up the free domains and make it a success given that a similar project in the Pacific island of Tokelau saw 18 million domain registrations (according to www.nic.tk) with only a population of 1,500 whereas Gabon’s population stands at 1.6m with 8.2% Internet penetration (http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm).

AboutMyGA

My GA is an initiative of the Agence Nationale des Infrastructures Numériques et des Fréquences (ANINF) in Libreville, Gabon. In line with the government’s strategy and local Internet community’s wishes, ANINF’s mission is to develop and promote the usage of domain names and make the .GA accessible to all. ANINF uses the infrastructure and expertise of Freenom to run the GA domain in a stable and automated way. With its experienced team, multi-redundant backbones and DNS root- servers located in every corner of the world, My GA can handle millions of registrations and is fully secure.

AboutFreenom

Freenom is a registry operator for Top Level Domains, and the pioneer of the free domain model. Its mission is to offer an alternative business model to TLDs in order to make them competitive on the global domain market. Freenom was previously known under the Freedom Registry name. Its first joint venture, the .TK Top Level Domain of the nation of Tokelau, was started in 2001 and is today the largest country code in the world with over 18 million active domains. Thanks to this innovative model, .TK has more domains registered than Russia and China combined. Freenom is now reaching out to countries interested in giving their national TLD a new start.

For more information:

Please contact Marcel Trik at My GA at : info@my.ga / T: +31 20 5315726