The country's telecom regulator has prepared a draft guideline for administering domains .bd and .bangla (in Bangla character).
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) issued the much-needed guideline, open for stakeholders' opinions. The guideline did not make trade licence mandatory for getting a domain name.
Though the Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd (BTCL) is currently responsible for domain registration, the draft guideline said the BTRC itself may act as the registrar or appoint a registrar to administer the Bangla domains.
According to the draft guideline, only Bangladeshi entities can avail these domains. In case of foreign entities, the domains will be allocated following submission of proper documents on presence in Bangladesh.
Of these domains, .bd is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Bangladesh. It is currently administered by the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology. Registrations are open with it, except in .gov and .mil sub-domains, which are limited to authorised entities in the Bangladesh government.
Though its online registration is available, currently the BTCL is only allowing second-level domain registration of .bd domain for Bangladeshi citizens only. It is only allowing the structure of websites like - example.com.bd, but not like - example.bd.
On the other hand, .bangla is the second country code top-level domain that was granted to Bangladesh in 2011. The domain is meant for the web addresses in Bangla language.
Though .bd domain was introduced on 20 May 1999, the BTCL started registering it for general people in 2003.
Similarly, .bangla domain was introduced in 2011, but the BTCL started the process of assigning domain names for websites on 1 January 2017.
Bangladesh had to fight influential India and West African country Sierra Leone to win .bangla domain, written in Bangla script. These two countries wanted the domain, claiming that Bangla was their language too.
However, these two domains are not popular in Bangladesh due to many hurdles, including presentation of a trade licence before getting a domain name.
According to industry stakeholders, the domain numbers are more or less around 5,000 each month.
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