Florian Hollender | floho.com

i stumbled upon Matt Mullenweg’s article where he describes the domain name change from photomatt.net to ma.tt - which is under the top level domain (TLD) for Trinidad and Tobago.
Cool - that could work for me, too! But the first name- I don’t know - maybe better hollend.er - getting florian@hollend.er as email would be awesome! So I looked up a list of international TLDs, and sure enough, .er exists - for Eritrea.

Imagine the startled look on my face when the only thing available at the link for a domain name registrar was a TEXT file, reading

Thanks for your inquiry about registering a domain under the ER top level domain.

The current policy is that domain names are limited to businesses or persons actually in Eritrea and application for a domain name must be made to Zerai. currently there are only two domains under .com.er', a single.edu.er’ domain, and a bunch of `.gov.er’ domains. there are actually over 100 subdomains under these domains, but domains directly underneath ER are fairly tightly controlled.

To register new domain names under ER, you must talk to the administrative contact. Here is the contact information:
[snip]


Eritrea does not yet have a direct internet connection. domain names are currently being used for the delivery of email.

For more information about the domain look at http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/email/index.html


thanks,

[name]

technical contact
ER top level domain

I realized that I had taken it for granted that when there is a TLD, the country is “online”. No, they are not, at least not fully. They have E-Mail, but no working internet access. Which makes me think about two things:

1. How incredibly lucky I am to live in a part of the world where there is SO MUCH - peace, infrastructure, democracy… all and every need is taken care of.
   
2. The digital divide is there. “Still”…. well, the problem only came up in the last decades. This was my first contact with it. Unfortunately, this is not even close to being a big problem to Eritrea in comparison to its other issues, but still a thing that needs attention. And awareness, first and foremost.

Has any of you touched the digital divide yet? In what context?


Technorati Tags: Eritrea, Digital Divide, TLD, domain names, politics, Africa, Development, Awareness