Some websites whose domain names are registered under .tj domain are reportedly not accessible outside Tajikistan due to poor loading.  Some experts say they sites are not accessible due to the low speed of external traffic.  

The majority of websites of the .tj domain zone are website of the government agencies such as meteo.tj, investocom.tj and sites of the free economic zones operating in the country.

In Tajikistan itself, the websites of the .tj domain zone open quickly if you cut off VPN.  Some other websites of the .tj domain zone also open but very slowly.  

Some IT specialists attribute this to purely technical reasons related to hosting and expensive Internet in Tajikistan.  

Under the country’s legislation, all websites of the government agencies should be hosted on domestic servers.

“Due to the high cost of the Internet, companies providing hosting provide very restricted resources in order not to raise server prices strongly.  The government bodies and some local companies acquire such cheap hostings in order to save on server expenses.  Therefore, these websites are practically inaccessible outside the country,” an information technology expert told Asia-Plus in an interview.   

Meanwhile, access to the website of the Asia-Plus Media Group remains blocked.  Access to the website has been blocked for almost a year.  

The domain name records for two websites, news.tj and asiaplus.tj, were deliberately misconfigured on August 19 to disrupt access. While this could potentially result from an error or cyberattack, the national domain registry has yet to investigate complaints from Asia Plus and Eastera, the private hosting provider that manages the domains.  Currently, access to Asia-Plus website is available through VPN and new domain name record – asiaplustj.info.  

The .tj domain is administered by the Information Technology Center.