Gov Websites Outage

Port Vila, Vanuatu – December 2, 2025 - The Government of Vanuatu has experienced technical issues with its website addresses ending in .gov.vu (dot gov dot vu) and .edu.vu (dot edu dot vu) subdomain within Vanuatu’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), .vu (dot vu).

The issues were not within the Government Broadband Network (GBN), which is administered and managed by the Department of Communications and Digital Transformation (DCDT).

Through the office of the Telecommunications, Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulator (TRBR) Vanuatu applied the open model governance structure for the administration and management for the dot vu ccTLD. Under the open model governance structure, Vanuatu went out to the open market for technical operators to submit bids to become the Registry for the dot vu.

The open model of the governance structure enables the registration of several Registrars of the dot vu domain within Vanuatu. Vodafone (Vanuatu) Ltd is one of the Registrars.

GoDaddy, the world’s largest and trusted domain registry and registrar, have a contract with Vanuatu as the Registry of Vanuatu’s dot vu ccTLD.

The Department of Communication and Digital Transformation is a Registrant of the dot gov dot vu and dot edu dot vu subdomain, with Vodafone (Vanuatu) Ltd as the Registrar. The decision for the Government of Vanuatu to go with Vodafone as its Registrar was inherited from the monopoly days of Telecom (Vanuatu) Ltd.

The issues caused partial disruptions – impacting the domain name system (DNS) records for several dot vu customers including the Vanuatu Government’s dot gov dot vu and dot edu dot vu subdomains and e-mail services, leading to intermittent outages and service accessibility problems.

The technical issues experienced on Monday, 01 December 2025, affected not all registrant of dot vu, who are customers of other Registrars. Based on the information received from Vodafone, not all registrants of dot vu who are customers of Vodafone are affected.

Following Vodafone’s swift action on Monday 01 December, and TRBR communicating with GoDaddy, services have since been restored.

DCDT will work in collaboration with the TRBR and Vodafone (Vanuatu) Ltd to investigate the technical issues that resulted in the outages.

The Government and all parties working in the ICT/Telecom sector in Vanuatu wish to reaffirm their commitment and dedication to delivering reliable digital infrastructure and services for Vanuatu.