Gabon’s My GA Registry, which is also Gabon’s domain name , has today opened up registration for .ga domains for free.
The 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, as it carries the Gabonese identity on the internet.
Internet users in Gabon as well as other countries will be offered free domain names from today onwards. There will not be any restrictions to registrations of free domains and anyone can claim their own .ga domain.
The domains will actually work exactly like any other extensions and can be renewed each regstration period at no cost.
Gabon, according to the international best practices, has 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.
“In the past there were several outages of the entire .GA domain, which wounded 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,” said Kouma
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.
My GA registry added that the domain names are available on a “first-come, first-served” basis and that resellers are welcome to sign up and provide further domain name distribution; more information can be found on www.my.ga.