st-domain Domain

The domain extension .st is the country-specific top-level domain of São Tomé and Príncipe, an island state, more precisely two islands in the Gulf of Guinea, located about 200 kilometres off the coast of Africa, more precisely west of Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. The two islands are of volcanic origin and are part of a mountain range created by volcanic activity along the Cameroonian line. The volcanoes on both islands are no longer active.

Award guidelines

The .st domain extension was launched on 7 November 1997 and is administered by Tecnisys. This company took over the task from the ST Registry based in Stockholm. Only second-level domains are available for the .st domain extension. Some addresses are blocked and can therefore not be registered.

Use

Web pages with the domain extension .st are predominantly used by private users and by companies with a direct connection to São Tomé and/or Príncipe. These are mainly providers of touristic offers. Tourism accounts for 71 percent of the gross domestic product. Accordingly, many of the approximately 210,000 inhabitants of the two islands of São Tomé and Príncipe work in the tourism industry. It is also the people who live mainly in the cities on the two islands and also have access to the WWW. However, a part of the inhabitants of São Tomé and Príncipe also live in the countryside, quite isolated from the already modest infrastructure on the islands, where besides coffee and bananas, vanilla, cinnamon, pepper and copra as well as beans and coconuts are cultivated and poultry is bred. A number of the inhabitants also live from fishing or work in industry, where palm oil and beer, shirts and soap are produced. However, the largest source of income is the sale of offshore oil drilling concessions in the Joint Development Zone, which is jointly managed with Nigeria.

Meaning

The importance of the domain extension .st is very small. The islands of São Tomé and Príncipe are not a financial marketplace, but a popular tourist destination, with offers being distributed through the platforms of the major travel companies.