Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

University of the West Indies, home of the Mona Information Technology Services, which administers the designated Internet domain name for Jamaica. - File

Mona Information Technology Services (MITS), the University of West Indies (UWI) department that administers the .jm Internet domain name assigned to Jamaica is to start charging for its use.

Carlton Samuels, chief information officer, said that the extra revenue would allow MITS to improve and put online services it currently does not advertise on its website.

The charge for .jm would remain competitive with international rates, as low as US$35 ($2,310) per year, said Samuels.

The designation is heavily used by public sector agencies and departments.

The MITS spokesman said government would get no concessions on the price.

"The service has been part of the university's outreach, and we think that we haven't been able to offer the kind of services that we would have liked," he said. "We don't want to be a for-profit, but we don't want it to cost us because university funds are quite limited these days."

Since January the number of .jm websites has increased by over a thousand to 3,494.

If MITS sustains its business after the charge is introduced, it stands to earn about US$122,000 which approximates $800,000.

"Persons are becoming more familiar with the possibility for economic advancement offered by the Internet and there is a host of government agencies. Google has also registered a .jm domain name, www.google.com.jm, so you can see there is also demand from overseas," he said.

Website research

Besides registering and administering all .jm domain names, MITS also conducts website research including domain name searches and analysing 'hits' to a given website.

The United States government last week announced that its commerce department would retain the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - the global equivalent of Mona Informatics - which was formed as a non-profit organisation to coordinate the master database of the world's domain names, known as the DNS.

The U.S. had funded the development of the Internet, which at its incept was a military tool, but its relationship with ICANN has been controversial, given that the Internet is a neutral worldwide computer network.

The U.S. had said that it would privatise ICANN, but the new one-year agreement renewable for four more years, means it could retain control until at least 2011.

- ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com