By Chinenye Anuforo, [email protected]
the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), the organization in charge of managing Nigeria’s national top level domain (ccTLD), the .ng, has decided to reduce the cost of dot ng (.ng) domain names by 40 % in order to populate the dot ng domain name, which is Nigeria’s identity in cyberspace.
Mr. Muhammed Rudman, Chairman of NiRA, made the announcement in Lagos, saying that the decision to reduce the cost of .ng domain names was taken by the NiRA Board after reviewing the growth trajectory of the names .ng domain names across the country over the past two years.
He said the board’s decision to reduce the cost of .ng domain names had been communicated to NIRA’s accredited registrars, which are responsible for registering, renewing and restoring .ng domain names. .ng domain names. This is due to NiRA’s 3R (Registry, Registrar, and Registrant) model, which means it does not sell domains to the general public; instead, all registrations go through its registrars.
According to Rudman, after reviewing the registration and use of .ng domain names over the past two years, the NiRA board decided to reduce the cost of .ng domain names so that they are more affordable for Nigerians.
The latest NiRA statistics on .ng domain name registration, renewal and restoration, released in February, revealed a drop in domain name registrations and renewals, with the numbers dropping to 178 from 184,341 in November 2021. 097 in January 2022.
According to Rudman, “to address the issue, NiRA decided to implement a 40% downward revision of domain name prices on .ng domains and a marginal reduction on .com.ng and other domains.” We made it public after announcing it at the Registrar Forum. The aim is to increase the number of domain names registered in the country by encouraging more people to register.
Previously, registrars were categorized into Platinum, Gold, Silver and Standard, with each category receiving domains at different prices, according to Rudman. However, the NiRA recently removed this categorization to create a level playing field for all registrars and to remove all barriers for new registrars. “We hope that the reduced pricing and removal of registrar categorization will drive adoption of the domain and make it easy for other organizations looking to become a NiRA registrar to do so,” he said.
Rudman explained the drop in enrollment numbers from November 2021 to January 2022 by stating that enrollment actually increased from 2019 to 2020, but there was a drop in 2021 and 2022 due to the effect of COVID-19.
“In 2020, we saw an increase in the number of registrations for country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs), but in 2021, the number of registrations dropped due to the effect of the pandemic of COVID-19,” he says. The problem is that everyone who registered in 2020 could not use the domain name that same year due to the pandemic, and therefore they did not renew their registration in 2021, and the new registration for ccTLDs was also suspended in 2021.”
According to Rudman, the drop in domain name registration in 2021 was not unique to the Nigerian market, but was a global issue that affected other ccTLDs, possibly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. .
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