Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig alpiq.com. NS
Answer
alpiq.com. 4 NS ns-1762.awsdns-28.co.uk.
alpiq.com. 4 NS ns-204.awsdns-25.com.
alpiq.com. 4 NS ns-769.awsdns-32.net.
alpiq.com. 4 NS ns-1344.awsdns-40.org.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0