First Side-swipe
The first official session of the new Assembly is not until next week. However that did not stop the Premier Sir Toke Talagi in claiming a head start.
In his short address to the Assembly and to the gathering at the debating chambers following his election as Premier, Sir Toke Talagi acknowledged the presence of the students from Niue High School and advised them of his government’s continuing commitment to education. He urged them to make use of the technology available, particularly the Internet to further their knowledge.
The mention of the word ‘Internet’ must have triggered something in the Premier – perhaps he recalled his own experience – but he took the opportunity to fire a broadside at Hon Terry Coe. Coe had been the minister of post and telecommunications when dot nu was supposedly up for grabs.
Sir Toke accused Coe of giving dot nu to ‘his palagi friends’, thereby depriving the island of a potential source of revenue. He said that the next time Terry Coe calls for the government to fix the roads, he should remember the millions he gave away. The Premier estimated that $100 million was generated through sales of the domain name. Terry Coe had maintained all along that he was not responsible for how dot nu ended in foreign hands.
A Commission of Inquiry by the Lakatani government into the handling of dot.nu was highly critical of some of the tactics used by the then administrator, an American businessman Bill Semich, but it cleared him of any wrong doing. Semich provided funding from the sale of .nu to provide free internet for the island.
Falling revenue from the sale of .nu had forced the once free internet, now under Kaniu to charge for the service in direct competition with Telecom Niue.
Falling revenue from the sale of .nu had forced the once free internet, now under Kaniu to charge for the service in direct competition with Telecom Niue.
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Internet sources give the following statistics for pages indexed in Google
American Samoa as 1,220,000
Cook Islands ci 43,300
Niue nu 5,100,000
Christmas Is cx 1,830,000
Fiji fj 466,000
Kiribati ki 427,000
New Zealand nz 18,500,000
Tokelau tk 2,170,000
Tonga to 2,490,000
Tuvalu tv 7,170,000
Western Samoa ws 3,000,000
