…Over 341.7 Million Domain Name Registered
Global provider of domain name registry services and Internet infrastructure, VeriSign Inc. has disclosed that the fourth quarter of 2021 closed with 341.7 million registrations across all top-level domains, an increase of 3.3 million domain name registrations or one per cent compared to the third quarter of 2021. Domain name registrations have increased by 1.6 million or 0.5 per cent year-on-year (YoY).
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of 173.4 million domain name registrations in the domain name base at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, an increase of 1.4 million domain name registrations or 0.8 per cent compared to the third quarter of 2021.
The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of 8.2 million domain name registrations or 5.0 per cent YoY. As of December 31, 2021, the .com domain name base totaled 160 million domain name registrations and the .net domain name base totalled 13.4 million domain name registrations.
New .com and .net domain name registrations totaled 10.6 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 10.5 million domain name registrations at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020.
VeriSign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide Internet users throughout the world with statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry.
MEANWHILE, Nigeria’s domain name, the .ng usage dropped from 178, 755 in February to 178,739 in March 2022.
Statistics obtained from the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), showed that in March 2021, the figure was 180, 763.
The data showed there were 6, 241 registration, 118 were restored and 5190 were renewed. According to the NiRA, active domain names at the third level were 119,573 while the second level saw 59, 166.
ALREADY, NiRA, which is the organisation in charge of managing Nigeria’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) the .ng, has reduced the cost of the domain name by 40 per cent to populate Nigeria’s identity in cyberspace.
President of NiRA, Muhammed Rudman, had announced this in Lagos in March, stating that the decision to lower the cost of .ng was made by NiRA’s board of directors after reviewing the growth trajectory of the domain name across the country over the last two years.
As part of efforts to ensure more usage of the country’s domain name, the National Information and Technology Development Agency (NITDA) last week, announced its readiness to enforce FG’s directive on domain names used in the country, especially among Ministries, Departments and Agencies, largely at state and local government levels.
NITDA said it is mandated by its enabling NITDA Act, 2007 to manage and administer Nigeria’s ccTLD (.ng). This gives NITDA the authority to allocate and administer the Nigerian Government Second-Level domains on .gov.ng; .edu.ng; .mil.ng; .sch.ng and any other second-level domain name that may be approved in the future.
Following the approval of the policy, NITDA has inaugurated a 14-man enforcement committee to monitor its implementation.
According to NITDA, the new policy is expected to drastically enhance public confidence in the authenticity and security of information and other services accessed from government-owned websites.