Domain Names and Internet Governance in Tunisia and the Middle East
On May 4-5 a conference took place in Tunisia – the third Middle East DNS Forum (MEDNSF 2016) organized by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the Internet Society, in order to “build bridges between different specialists in the region and the world at large, share experience, update the audience on what is happening in the industry at the international level domain names and the business opportunities arising from it”. Previous events were held in Dubai and Amman.
Also at the meeting held on May 5th, there was a cctld management workshop, attended by various experts to discuss the domestic domain name of Tunisia (.tn). This domain name is administered by the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) since 1996 and the domain name (تونس) since 2010. The same year, there was also relief in the process of registration of the domain name (.tn) including the opening activities of registrars, reducing the complexity of the process and lowering costs. This policy was influential on the surge in the number of registered domain names, and today there are 33 thousand, with the expectation that in 2025 there will be 47 thousand of such domain names.
Although the study of Middle East DNS showed that there is a greater awareness of end-users regarding the use of domain names in the country, but these tend to buy generic domain names, rather than local ones (with the extension .tn).
The reasons for this are lack of diverse services and poor quality of service, including the lack of possibility for registration and online payment, which prevent extensive use of local domain names. Indeed fairly limited market size and penetration rate of (.tn) stands at 0.77% of households, while the one in Arabic is only 0.02%, while only one percent of online content is in Arabic. Another aspect is the spam industry which is prosperous in the country, most of which is sent from the local domain, resulting in its definition as spammer.
So how to strengthen the domain name (.tn)?
- Local telecommunications authority has reduced the tariffs from 42 TDN in 2008 to 16.1 TDN in 2014.
- Studies have shown that most of the sites of the local extension are hosted on servers outside the country, therefore, has to develop local content, since this is the only way to strengthen the local sites and thus these domain names.
- This authority also began on June 5th, 2013 a process during which it enabled the opening of the registry of domain names to the public, including public and private organizations and legal entities.
It was also recommended the implementation of marketing strategies for switching these domain names, including marketing along with other products.
The subject of the DNS was also discussed, which was argued that it is part of good governance, as well as infrastructure and industry standards and that the DNS is part of the Internet economy. Therefore, it was argued that the ATI promote the new version of DNS that will be fully market-oriented.
