Business News of Friday, 17 December 2004

Source: GNA

Gh-NIC Centre to create Competitive Environment - Quaynor

Accra, Dec. 17, GNA - The Ghana Network Information Centre (Gh-NIC) is to delegate the registration of the Ghana Country Code Top-Level domain, dot gh, a measure aimed at creating competition in the sector and help accelerate the promotion of the domain to avoid capital flight.

This was announced by Dr Nii Narku Quaynor, Chief Executive of Network Computer Systems on Friday during the First Public Outreach Forum of GhNIC held at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre For Excellence in Accra.

In his address, Dr. Nii Narku Quaynor, who is also the Administrative Contact for GhNIC, trustees of the dot gh domain, observed that every domain registered outside dot gh leads to capital flight out of Ghana.

He explained that as trustees the designated authorities had the duty to serve the community and be equitable to all groups in the processing requests for domain names.

Dr Quaynor said the bottom-up policy development process of Gh-NIC empowers the domain name holders, registrars and operators to decide how it operates and what it does.

He advised the Ghanaian Internet community to take keen interest in the global Internet developments such as Electronic Numbers ENUM which were telephone standards using normal phone numbers and associating them with links for data communication and Multilingual Domain Names and key words which would be driving the future of the Internet.

ENUM, which uses combined Public Telephone Networks and Internet Protocol Services, becomes important integrator of telephone networks and Internet based networks.

Gh-NIC began operating as a Country Code Top-Level in Ghana in 1995 with its technical operations handled by Network Computer Systems NCS, the premier Internet service provider in Ghana.