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Free the .co.zw domain space!

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I’ve been following TechZim’s coverage of issues surrounding the registration of a .co.zw domain. The process is unnecessarily laborious and complicated and it opens up those who would register a Zimbabwean domain to exploitation by ISPs, who in many cases bundle their comparatively expensive hosting products with the domain registration. As a result a number of businesses and web portals register generic Top Level Domains (.com, .net. info etc). It is not possible to overstate the importance of hosting Zimbabwean business and content on the .co.zw domain space. That space is a national resource, and belongs to all Zimbabweans.

In an interview, founding editor of TechZim Limbikani Makani had this to say:

The big problem is that it’s all unclear. No one knows, and the few people that do know are the ISPs that do the registration. The truth is if you go to a registrar with your paperwork, they will register you. The problem is that they don’t make this information (registration requirements) available. Either they don’t have the resources, they don’t want to or they’re afraid. Afraid that if this becomes something that just anybody can do something negative might happen, or the resource that they’ve been feeding from might disappear, or it might get into the wrong hands. Because of that they’re afraid to just let go. I think they can let go. Is it too expensive? It’s actually not. ZISPA doesn’t charge the ISPs for domain registration at all. What they charge is a membership to ZIPSA which is $30, which is nothing to a big organisation like Utande or ZELCO. Unfortunately, there is not enough information out there about domain registration. The ZIPSA website has been updated in several years. ZISPA can immediately improve that. Secondly they can make the entire process simpler. They’re not making enough of an effort to make the informatio0n available to everyone.

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