Why .bd domain still struggles after two decades

Infographics: TBS

Website registration under the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .bd still struggles to gain traction after two decades of launching the service.

The number of registered domain names used as website addresses has already crossed a million in Bangladesh but, frustratingly, only 41,000 Bangladeshi sites are carrying the country code at the end of their respective web addresses.

The number of ccTLD users is more than one lakh in Sri Lanka, 38 lakh in India, and around 1.8 crore in Germany, according to State Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak.

The unpopularity of the national ccTLD that is resulting in an increasing outflow of foreign currencies every year has two major reasons, said experts at an outreach programme jointly organised by the nonprofit global internet domain governance organisation the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), and the local domain industry.

.bd is not a generic top-level domain or gTLD like .com, .net, .gov or .info and it needs users to carry a gTLD before the ccTLD. Not every website owner likes it, said domain industry people.

For instance, one cannot have a website address like www.dhaka.bd, instead, it will have to be www.dhaka.com.bd or www.dhaka.net.bd or www.dhaka.info.bd, which is not that lucrative.

Having a gTLD will solve the problem, and State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak said the government is eyeing several gTLDs for Bangladesh.

The world already has over 1,200 gTLDs, according to ICANN.

Most importantly, the service of .bd domain registration and maintenance has been a monopoly business of the state-owned Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd (BTCL) that is not popular among customers due to its poor quality of services.

State Minister Palak recently ordered the BTRC to immediately come up with policies for allowing private sector companies to compete with the BTCL so that the new players can serve the market with dynamism.

"As part of improved services, BTCL is registering .bd domains in a day. Why not in a minute?" he said at the opening day of the two-day programme that explored ways to strengthen the national domain sector and ended on Sunday.

In fact, under BTCL, .bd domain is losing users as there had been 46,800 Bangladeshi websites carrying the ccTLD in 2019.

The response is even poorer for the .bangla domain that lets users use a web address in Bengali font.

Securing the internationalised domain name (IDN) .bangla allocated in 2011, the BTCL offered registration services in 2017, and in 2019, not even 1000 websites took the opportunity as Bangladeshi users are comfortable with English names.

Samiran Gupta, vice president of ICANN's Government Affairs and Public Policy Leader Division at the event, said on Sunday in his keynote that the emergence of universal acceptance of local language domains is expected to fetch the global domain industry $10 billion in the next decade.

National domains are a national pride and a great way to promote one's own culture internationally, said domain industry representatives, adding that they also help save foreign currencies by adding more value locally.

While speaking as a special guest, BTRC Chairman Engineer Md Mohiuddin Ahmed said internet usage speaks for the domain industry potential in Bangladesh, and the telecom regulator is working on opening up the national domain registration and maintenance services.

More than a hundred Bangladeshi firms are serving the global market in reselling and maintaining domains, and they can help promote the national domains enough in the local market if they get supportive policies.

Domain and hosting service provider Eyhost Limited's managing director Imran Hossen said the government extended the ICT sector's tax holiday for three years in the latest finance act and excluded his sector.

Incentives for firms should be restored for building a stronger local domain industry to save dollars and protect national cyber security, he added.