Cost of website names set to drop next year

Ugandans can expect to pay lower fees to acquire website identities when the continent’s first domain name comes online next year, Ms Sophia Bekele, the President of DotConnect Africa has said.

Dot Connect Africa, a private-public organisation based in Mauritius, is pushing for the dot Africa domain name. Domain names are identification labels that define a realm of administrative control on the Internet for instance .com and .biz.

“Rates for the domain names will vary from $5 (11,300) to $10,000 (Shs22.6 million) depending on the organisation or subscriber,” Ms Bekele told Business Power in an interview recently.

The price bracket she quoted represents almost half the rates charged by domain name vendors in the United States and Europe. “In terms of cost, we definitely want to have a competitive advantage over the .com and .org names,” she said during her recent visit to Kampala.

The organisation’s mission is to have a competitive product that people like students and small business owners can afford. “For an average person and students, it will be much cheaper to encourage innovation and ownership,” she said.

Dot Connect Africa is currently in negotiation with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICCAN), the global body in charge of top level domain names, to have .Africa approved.

If the application is approved, the continental domain name should be in place by August 2011 according to Ms Bekele. This year, ICCAN approved the .ae name as the top level domain for the United Arab Emirates following an application in 2009.

Besides lowering the cost of acquisition of domain names on the continent, the dot Africa name is expected to turn out as a big public relations platform for Africa across the globe.

“It is an opportunity to brand and rebrand Africa and bring in products and services to show to the world,” she said. For business, the name is set to benefit Pan-African companies like; Ecobank and United Bank for Africa, which are expected to push the brand through their global business partners.

The organisations will have an option of either putting their country top level domain names like; .Uganda or .Rwanda, or have a vision of providing their services across Africa thereby adopting the .Africa domain.

African economies will also witness growth of the information technology industry as more companies will venture into domain registrations, hosting and marketing. This is expected to result into numerous job opportunities for Africans like it has happened in other continents with their customised domain names.

The development comes at a time when more Ugandans are embracing the internet for both leisure and business, with the fall in internet prices and arrival of fibre optic cables like Seacom and the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy).