Nigeria loses N10bn annually hosting domain names abroad

The Nigeria Internet Registration Association on Monday said that unless the Federal Government intervened, the country would continue to lose about N10bn yearly through the hosting of country’s code Top Level Domain name and .ng outside the country.

It stated that the government’s intervention had become necessary given that information put on the Internet were no longer safe “since it had become easier to hack into it.”

NiRA said such data would be better secured if hosted within the country, adding, “Only the current administration can make this possible.”

According to the association, domain hosting is ‘renting a space’ on the Internet to hold a website so that anyone can find the website by typing in the domain name.

The President, NiRa, Mr. Sunday Folayan, said it was regrettable that just one per cent of the .ng domains registered by its registrars was what was hosted in the country.

Our correspondent found out that only 1.33 per cent of the 19,649 domain names registered and hosted by NiRA’s registrars is hosted in Nigeria.

Of the 56 NiRA registrars, 79 per cent of them are Nigerians, while the remaining are mostly from the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries.

Folayan said, “And if we estimate, hosting has the income of about five to 10 times the cost of domain name registration. You will see that it is a lot of money we are talking about. So, 99 per cent of what NiRA has registered is hosted outside, and NiRA has conservatively put what Nigeria is losing by today’s value at not less than N10bn in terms of hosting from the .ng domain.

“There are other .com domains that are also registered by NiRA, which could be more than five times the registered .ng. So, we are talking of not less than N50bn, plus the N10bn from the .ng, making a total of not less than N60bn,” he said.

The NiRA president said the hosting of the .ng domain names outside Nigeria amounted to capital flight and was not good for the country’s economy.

“This is capital flight; it is something that bothers NiRA and we are looking at ways to mitigate that and help preserve foreign exchange, particularly at this very tight time for the country,” he added.

http://www.punchng.com/nigeria-loses-n10bn-annually-hosting-domain-names-abroad/