Dot bangla internet domain registration to start from Dec 16, Tarana Halim says

User-level registration of dot bangla or .bangla internet domain label will begin on Dec 16, the Victory Day of Bangladesh, says State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim.

Tarana made the announcement on Tuesday while briefing the press on the registration process.
 
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Oct 5 sent a letter to the government clearing the much-awaited Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) label.
 
Indian state West Bengal and Sierra Leone, one of whose official languages is Bangla, had also applied for the IDN label - dot bangla (.বাংলা in Bangla fonts).
 
Another ICANN-approved domain label for Bangladesh is dot bd or .bd. According to the BTCL, users have registered 36,500 websites with this domain label.
 
These labels work as a state's recognition, for example - dot UK or .uk websites belong to the United Kingdom.
 
Now .bangla (.বাংলা in Bangla fonts) is Bangladesh's own Unicode domain label.

Tarana said the automation of the registration process will be complete by December.

"After completing the making of guidelines, recruitment of a separate workforce and all other processes, we will be able to start providing the service on Dec 16," she said.

Tarana said the registration fee and other issues would be finalised in a board meeting of state-run telecoms BTCL, which is working as the technical contact for the dot bangla domain label.

"The initial proposal is to keep the registration for two years with Tk 500 per year and Tk 10,000 for special words," Tarana said.

She said the users will also have to pay the government-fixed VAT and the cost for collecting the fee.

The proposed charge for renewal or transferring ownership is Tk 1,500.

"The users may get a 20 percent discount for clearing five years' fees at a time and 30 percent for 10 years," the minister said.

She also said the fees and other issues may change as the decisions depend on final approval.