History of the Pacific Islands as British protectorate by a Resident Commissioner from 1892 to 1916 as part of the British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT), and later as part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony from 1916 to 1974. A referendum was held in December 1974 to determine whether the Gilbert Islands and Ellice Islands should each have their own administration. As a consequence of the referendum, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony ceased to exist on 1 January 1976 and the separate British colonies of Kiribati and Tuvalu came into existence. Tuvalu became fully independent within the Commonwealth on 1 October 1978. On
.co (second-level domain) current manager, Neustar, markets it to global markets as an alternative to .com, or as a "generic country code top level domain" gccTLD. .co (second-level domain) In a number of countries, .co is used as a second-level domain to mean "commercial" and domain registrants register second-level domains of the form .co.xx, where xx is the country code top level domain (e.g., .co.uk in the U.K. and .co.jp in Japan). Some of the countries using .co as a second-level domain include: Barbados (.bb), Cook Islands (.ck), Costa Rica (.cr), India (.in), Indonesia (.id), Israel (.il), Japan (.jp), New Zealand (.nz), South