Internet in

Tokelau Tokelau (; ; known previously as the Union Islands, and, until 1976, known officially as the Tokelau Islands) is a dependent territory of New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean. It consists of three tropical coral atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, a ...

is provided by Teletok, the government-owned"Bebo transforms remote Pacific youth"
Stuff, 5 November 2007. communications corporation, and Taloha Inc., a private company formed by the Dutch Joost Zuurbier.
Fakaoko villages, 2003.

History

In the year 2000,Interview: Dot TK Registry CEO, Joost Zuurbier
PCMag, 10 May 2007 Joost Zuurbier realised that as Tokelau held an

ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of ...

country code it was entitled to a domain name under

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

regulations. He went to Tokelau and negotiated a deal under which his company would be able to act as the registrar for

.tk .tk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand in the South Pacific. It can be registered on the company Freenom. Overview Tokelau allows any individual to register domain names. Users and smal ...

domain names, in exchange for a licensing fee and the provision of free internet connectivity for the residents of the atolls.The tiny island with a huge Web presence
Cable News Network, 10 July 2012 Before this, the three atolls had only one computer each, and the internet connection was so slow that it could only be used for email, without attachments. According to Zuurbier, an internet connection that would cost $10 per month in the United States costs approximately $2000 per month to provide in Tokelau, and because Tokelau has a GDP (PPP) per capita of only $1035, most Tokelauans would be unable to afford an internet connection without outside assistance.

Present situation

In Tokelau, there are several free

internet cafes The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, and some households have their own wireless internet connection. According to Tokelau's 2011 Census,

Fakaofo Fakaofo, formerly known as Bowditch Island, is a South Pacific Ocean atoll located in the Tokelau Group. The actual land area is only about 3 km2 (1.1 sq mi), consisting of islets on a coral reef surrounding a central lagoon of some 45 k ...

had the highest proportion of households that accessed the Internet, either at their house or at a public access point (42.4%).

Atafu Atafu, formerly known as the Duke of York Group, is a group of 52 coral islets within Tokelau in the south Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. With a land area of , it is the smallest of the three islands that constitute Tokelau. It is an atoll and su ...

was next (39.8%), and

Nukunonu Nukunonu is the largest atoll within Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand, in the south Pacific Ocean. It comprises 30 islets surrounding a central lagoon, with about of land area and a lagoon surface area of . Motuhaga is the only islet that ...

was close behind (39.0%). Households on Fakaofo were most likely to access the Internet at their house, with 25.9% doing so. It is common practice for households to use their neighbours' wireless Internet connection, but sign into the network using their own logon, however this practice was not measured by the census. ''This section contains content derived from th
2011 Tokelau Census
produced by

Statistics New Zealand Statistics New Zealand ( mi, Tatauranga Aotearoa), branded as Stats NZ, is the public service department of New Zealand charged with the collection of statistics related to the economy, population and society of New Zealand. To this end, Stats ...

, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand License. See

(2012).
Profile of Tokelau Ata o Tokelau: 2011 Census of Population and Dwellings / Tuhiga Igoa a Tokelau 2011 mo te Faitau Aofaki o Tagata ma na Fale.
''. Wellington: Statistics New Zealand for the full citation.''

References

{{Oceania topic, Internet in