.ly domain names are $75 now.

Regards,

Hadi Naser

Thanks for the comment. I guessed as much about the reasoning behind the adoption of a closed ccTLD system, and also the possible reasons for .ng registration’s current state of affairs.

The former, I think, is still a mistake: a better approach would be to have an open ccTLD but with strict domain-squatting enforcement. This would allow internet entrepreneurs from any country to register *.ng domains for legitimate use (i.e. rather than squatting/ad sites), and since they’d probably prefer .ng rather than .com.ng, etc, there would almost certainly be plenty of domain namespace left for Nigerian companies with “ordinary” (rather than “web 2.0″) names to choose from. Opening .ng to all potential registrants would create a boom sector in the Nigerian economy, with a steady flow of income from international registrants whose .ng sites succeeded. So it could be a better approach, economically , for Nigeria, than keeping the ccTLD closed. I think other countries with open TLDs and sensible regulation of their domain registration market have demonstrated the viability of this approach more than adequately.

As for the other point, “poor management”, as you put it. I see you’ve written about that here. There’s also an interesting forum discussion about the issue here.

It’s good to hear that things are picking up on this front. I’m going to subscribe to your RSS feed to keep myself updated.

Thanks again,

spk

Lets hope that things improve even more, when the registry has accredited some Nigerian companies as registrars for the TLD. Then, the TLD would explode and become much more popular since the market will become very competitive.

About registeri.ng, that might come to pass but for now, things stay the way they are.

I have a few blog posts on my personal blog, relating to .ng domains and every else about it.