The two other African registrars are Internet Solutions of South Africa and Kheweul of Senegal. The Ghana registrar will now be authorized to register .com, .org, .net, and .info domains. The hope is that this will bring more business to Ghana and surrounding African nations. Ghana Dot Com also aims to encourage more locally-produced websites by people of the Ghana community.

“We hope that this venture will present a platform for hosting more localized content and in local languages to develop the African information resource market,” said Professor Nii Qaynor, Chairman of Ghana Dot Com.

In addition to registering domains, Ghana Dot Com will also host websites. One of their future goals is to become the registrar for country code top level domains (ccTLD) in Africa.

Source: Ghana News Agency
Photo: Flickr

Other recent sales include:

u.to- $13,000 USD
superrealtors.com- $5,250 USD
lmj.com- €3,103
auto-shop.com- $2,888 USD
dominationphonesex.com- $1,100 USD

As far as the domain business is concerned, the holiday season is pretty slow. Six and seven-figure domains tend to be very expensive gifts.

Photo | Flickr

The East African country has been host to a hotbed of Internet industry activity lately. The country has just been connected to a new cross-ocean fiber optic cable, significantly increasing the bandwidth available to the region. In 2010, it will host an ICANN meeting.

Currently, 8.6% of the population— 3.3 million Kenyans– has Internet access. This is a huge jump from the year 2000, when only 200,000 people, or 0.7% of the population, could access the web.

Source | Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

Maybe further down the road there will be a use for it, but considering Africa is the most unwired continent in the world, what’s the point? Instead of worrying about a regional TLD, countries in the area should be concerned with improving their own extensions and infrastructure.

Finally, “.africa” is too long for an extension. Why not .afr or .afca?

Place names are excellent domain investments because while tastes change and products constantly enter and exit the market, countries rarely disappear and are always a subject of interest.

The domain Xoxide.com and site also sold for $76,000 USD. They were owned by a now closed Internet store selling computer cases and modding supplies.

Other recent sales:

jjj.com- $48,500
wordy.com- $20,000
prosensa.com- $19,000
lampen.com (German for “lamps”)- €13,800
wordplay.com- $12,000
shirtshop.com- $10,000

Source | Domain Name News

The biggest sales so far have been Hotels.cm and Sex.cm for £50,097 ($81,000 USD) and £31,542 ($51,000 USD) respectively. Other notable sales include:

taobao.cm- $35,100

mail.cm- $30,100

porn.cm- $23,050

coupons.cm- $20,100

free.cm- $17,800

pornhub.cm- $15,100

creditreport.cm- $11,100

insurance.cm- $10,200

youporn.cm- $10,100

lawyers.cm- $10,008

domain.cm- $9,580

These names are not necessarily selling as investments, but instead to make money through typosquatting. Hotels.cm, for instance, is a common typo for the popular hotel booking website Hotels.com. No doubt Cameroon is making quite a bit of money from these sales.

Source | The Domains

Many of these domain registries are afraid to do so because of ICANN’s ties with the United States government. Many also misunderstand the requirements for joining. According to Vika Mpisane, head of the Africa Top Level Domain Organization (AfTLD):

Some African ccTLDs have kept away from the ccNSO because of the whole controversy of the ICANN Joint Partnership Agreement with the U.S. government. I get a sense there’s a slowly growing discomfort amongst some African governments with the continuing U.S. oversight over ICANN.

Compared to the rest of the world, Africa’s domain registration system is far behind. Most of its ccTLDs do not have an automated registration process, and may be subject to intervention from government officials. As more and more people from this region connect to the web, however, things are sure to change.

Photo | unseenob

As is the case with .eco, I don’t see much of a target for the .DJ name. Sure, some generics like radio.dj and techno.dj are valuable, but does the average DJ need a premium domain? Having a site might be nice, but the price for a .dj registration is £39.99 a year. Disc jockeys do not make very much money, and I doubt most could justify the expense when a perfectly decent .com could be had for a fourth of the price.

In addition, any .dj registration must comply with Islamic moral standards. The country’s government, which is based on Islamic law, requires that no domain be “hurting, confusing, sexual, blasphematory, racist, [or] unecessarily provocative.”

A great deal of Western DJs more than likely play music that would offend more conservative cultures and some even have unsavory names. Would rap.dj violate the rules because many songs of that genre contain inappropriate language? What if a DJ catering to gay night clubs wanted to purchase gay.dj?

The idea sounds good on paper, but I just don’t see many DJs feeling the .DJ beat.

“SAT-3 is currently the only fibre optic cable serving West Africa,” explained Ladi Okuneye, chief marketing officer of Suburban Telecom, which provides the majority of Nigeria’s bandwidth.
“So all West African countries have to use it.”

The fibre optic cable is 15,000km (9,3000miles) long, connecting eight West African countries along is route to South Africa. 70% of Nigeria’s bandwidth is routed through Benin, causing it to suffer greatly from the cut. The company responsible for the network, Suburban Telecom, is sending a ship from South Africa to investigate. According to Okuneye, it could be two weeks before the ship arrives.

Source: BBC News
Photo: Flickr

So far the highest sale has been Cars.cm for £21,455 ($35,000 USD). The highest sales have all been generic names. Here are some others:

• jobs.cm- £6,130 ($10,000 USD)
• games.cm- £ 3,065 ($5,000 USD)
• juegos.cm- £3,065 ($5,000 USD)
• loan.cm- £3,065 ($5,000 USD)
• lasvegas.cm- £1,962 ($3,200 USD)
• date.cm- £613 ($1,000 USD)

I was a bit surprised by date.cm. I expected that to sell for a much higher price. Juegos.cm is Spanish for “Games.cm.” Normally foreign-word domains sell for less than their English counterparts, but in this case, both variations sold for 3,065.

Domainers also seem to be keeping away from trademarked domains for the most part, though there are exceptions. ABC.cm is just one trademarked name that has sold. It fetched £736 ($1200 USD).

Source: The Domains

Photo: Flickr