London’s Daily Telegraph has an article on Tokelau – comprised of three coral atolls that lie about 800km (500 miles) north of Western Samoa, halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii – who has licensed their ccTLD, and is using the money it earns from the project to pay for computers and internet access.The article follows the recent opening of a London office by Dot TK and claims since launching in 2005, there have been more than 1.6 million .tk domain names registered, with around 10,000 names registered every day.The Daily Telegraph reports:
“The revenue Tokelau has earned from the venture contributes towards more than 10 per cent of the island’s GDP , and has been spent on a high-speed satellite internet connection to all three atolls and more than 100 communal computers for use by the 1,500 islanders and government departments.””Dot TK earns money from targeted advertising embedded on all web pages with the “.tk” suffix, and a percentage of that is then given to the Tokelauan government in royalty fees.”Islanders and essential services on Tokelau get first choice at domain names, and “All other users of the .tk suffix will need to ensure their website gets at least 25 hits every 90 days in order to keep their new domain name.”The full article is available at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/12/ntokelau112.xmlAlso see:
tk: World’s smallest economy dives into web scrum
Imagine you’re a dignitary from a tiny, isolated, rugby-obsessive Pacific island group. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if the UK launch of your new internet economy could be scheduled during the Rugby World Cup in France? “It’s a happy coincidence I think,” said the publicist for Dot TK on Wednesday. The company aims to capitalise on the .tk TLD assigned to Tokelau, which holds the title of the world’s lowest GDP.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/13/tokelau_domain_launch/