Four years after enthusiastic launch, ‘dot Bangla’ domain label draws little interest

‘Dot Bangla’ (.বাংলা) , the national domain label of Bangladesh in Bengali language, has received lukewarm response from subscribers.

Only 905 websites have registered on Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited or BTCL for ‘dot Bangla’, with 623 of them active, after the launch of the domain label in Bangla font in 2016.

Annually, the number of registration has dropped to a third in four years, according to BTCL.

Domain registration with ‘dot bd’ (.bd), another domain label approved for Bangladesh by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN, has increased by 30,380 in this period.

The long-awaited ‘dot Bangla’ Internationalised Domain Name or IDN allowed people to create websites with Bangla web addresses. BTCL began to register domains with the label from Jan 1, 2017.

It enabled Bengali speakers to sign in and use the internet using their own language.

Indian state West Bengal and Sierra Leone, one of whose official languages is Bangla, had also applied for the ‘dot Bangla IDN label in Bangla font.

IDN is a system that supports languages other than English for writing a web address.

These labels serve as recognition of a state's websites, for example – ‘dot UK’ (.uk) websites belong to the United Kingdom while ‘dot Bangla’ is Bangladesh's own Unicode domain label.

The ‘dot Bangla’ label is the second country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) for Bangla websites. It is used to mark web addresses in Bengali.

BTCL has been working as the technical contact for the ‘dot Bangla’ domain label.

Subscribers prefer ‘dot bd’ over ‘dot Bangla’, according to BTCL data.

Initially, the ‘dot Bangla’ label received a warm response, said Mir Mohammad Morshed, a director of BTCL. It registered 386 domains with the label in 2017; 174 in 2018; 236 in 2019; 104 in 2020 and only five in 2021 showing a gradual decline in number.

Entrepreneurs prefer English domain level over ‘dot Bangla’ because English is used all over the world, an information technologist says.

On the other hand, ‘dot bd’ label was used for the registration of 5,177 domains in 2017; 4,889 in 2018; 6,504 in 2019; 13,042 in 2020 and 768 in 2021. Among them 32,134 domains are active.

Altogether 33,508 domains have ‘dot Bangla’ or ‘dot bd’ label, said Morshed. As many as 1,374 domains are disconnected temporarily.

BTCL Managing Director Rafiqul Matin said they have taken initiatives to promote ‘dot Bangla’ domain label on social media.

He said they are operating label in a safe, automated and regularly updated system.

To make it convenient for the subscribers, the service charge for the domain label is received online, through bKash, Nagad and Teletalk, Matin said.

A subscriber can access all BTCL services online, he added.

“We have become used to English. Initially some people used this domain label (‘dot Bangla) out of emotion, but later it fizzled out. We should not expect a large number of people to register with ‘dot Bangla’ domain,” the BTCL MD said.

“When people register a domain for running their business or to promote something, they prefer the English one, being used across the globe,” said technologist Sumon Ahmed Sabir.

He emphasised the need for a promotional campaign to popularise the ‘dot Bangla’ label.

“We’re paying less importance to Bangla. We’re reluctant to ensure the use of Bangla,” said Post and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar.

“Also, there are other problems in ensuring use of Bangla. This (less interest in ‘dot Bangla’) could be due to people’s inability to write Bangla letters on their devices. Many of us are not used to write Bangla letters on digital devices,” he said.

The biannual registration fee has been reduced for ‘dot Bangla’ to Tk 400 from Tk 1,000, he said, describing the steps taken by the government to encourage more people to use the label for their domains.

Also, problems in using Unicode in the domain label have been fixed, the minister added.