Dutch headquartered registry operator Freenom is helping Equatorial Guinea relaunch its internet top level domain, GQ, and giveaway domains with this name for free.

According to Domaintyper.com, the .gq top level domain name has been in existence since 1997.

But Freenom says it is working with Equatorial Guinea's largest telecoms provider GETESA to relaunch the GQ domain and then give away web addresses with this name at no cost.

Kick-off for this initiative starts on December 1, 2014 with free GQ domains on offer to all internet users in Equatorial Guinea and internationally.

Furthermore, Freenom says no restrictions to registrations of free domains will be enforced while GQ web names can be renewed an unlimited number of times at no charge.

"Free domains make a lot of sense in countries where the banking penetration is in the single digit range," says Freenom's chief executive officer Joost Zuurbier in a statement.

"The demand for free domains is enormous because people in those nations may not have a credit card to buy domains, but they do have a profound need to communicate and build their presence online.

"Free domains are an important catalyst that directly enable local content creation and internet entrepreneurship," he notes.

Freenom has previously explained that it generates by revenue monetising expired domain names.

The company has previously said that domains that are no longer used by the registrant or are expired are taken back by Freenom and the residual traffic is sold to advertising networks.

Apart from this, Freemon has also previously said that it generates additional revenue

by offering digital white labeled services, such as hosting packages, SSL certificates and others, to free domain name users.

The company also manages the registry operations for the TK (Tokelau), GA (Gabon), CF (Central African Republic) and ML (Mali) top level domains.

In December 2013, Freenom closed $3 million in Series A funding from a group of investors led by Kima Ventures (KIMA).