ENTANGLED IN THE WORLDWIDEWEB

What are the prospects for the development of Internet technologies in Azerbaijan? This question is topical as never before today in the hi-tech age. For this reason, a number of interested government agencies are working hard in this regard, for example, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the head of which recently said that the number of Internet users in the country is expected to rise by two or two and a half times by 2008. This means that if the number of Internet users at the moment is between 400,000 and 650,000, this indicator will reach almost one million in the foreseeable future. However, increasing the number of Internet users is far from being the only problem in Azerbaijan's IT area. The issue of developing the national domain is also topical today.

What sort of domains do Azerbaijani Internet users prefer if they wish to have a website in the worldwide web? Experience shows that they prefer mainly foreign domains - .net, .com, .org, but not the national domain - .az. And there are reasons for that.

Resources are flowing abroad

We have to say that during the entire period of its existence, the national domain has had a hard time. On 25 August 1993, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to allocate the domain zone .az to Azerbaijan. In the same year, Latvia received its own domain zone - .lv. The republics of the former Soviet Union received domains in the following order: Lithuania (.lt, 3 June 1992), Estonia (.ee, 3 June 1992), Ukraine (.ua 1 December 1992), Georgia (.ge, 2 December 1992), Moldova (.md, 24 March 1994), Russia (.ru, 7 April 1994)

As we can see, Russia received its national domain almost one year after Azerbaijan. However, despite this, according to the Public Opinion foundation, the number of Internet users in the Russian Federation is more than 22m people, or 21 per cent of the country's population. Thus, the Russian Internet has reached a level where investments in this area are economically justified. This situation affects the pace of registration of domain names which any Internet project needs. In the last two years, the development of the .ru zone has been characterised with an increasing number of registrations. The indicator of the annual growth (46 per cent) is one of the highest in the world. If it continues like this, the boundary of 550,000 domains will be crossed by the middle of the current year.

Let's look at another example. It is known that countries of the European Union have set up their own domain .eu, and in a short period of time, the number of requests for it exceeded 300,000.

How about Azerbaijan? The president of Azerbaijan's Internet forum, the director of the Multimedia centre for information systems and technologies, Osman Gunduz, has said that inveterate IT specialists and rank-and-file Internet users are quite tired of the problem of hosting. In our country, the number of registered users of the .az domain zone has just only reached 3,000. More than 90 per cent of Azerbaijani websites are hosted by foreign servers. This is what potential clients prefer.

Of course, we can cite loads of arguments in this regard, for example, comparative characteristics of the population and territory of Russia, EU countries and Azerbaijan, the number of Internet users and so on. But there is a fact: the .az domain zone is not in great demand among potential Internet users yet although it is our national domain. "The matter is not even that clients' money goes into the treasury of other countries. What national security can we talk about if 90 per cent of Azerbaijani websites are not actually Azerbaijani? I wrote down some excerpts from the law and came to the conclusion that the current state of affairs is a direct violation of our country's laws," Gunduz believes. 

The problem is also partly related to the price. The price of the .az domain was 30 manats until recently. This makes up 34.40 US dollars (according to the current exchange rate). The price of annual support was the same. But in order to make the process of registration more accessible, the price of the registration of the domain and its annual use was lowered by 33 per cent - to 20 manats (25 dollars).

Now let's have a look at the prices of popular domains like .net, .com, .org, .biz, .info - this is a maximum of 15-20 standard units per year. The prices for domains like .net, .com, .org are the same, while .biz and .info cost 50 standard units for two years (extending them also costs 50 standard units for two years). The prices here are given before tax.

Having studied all the Internet websites that mention some domain zones, we can observe that you can buy the same .com or .org for 5-7 dollars.

It is natural that this obvious asymmetry in the development of Internet resources causes traffic in Azerbaijan itself to be more expensive. If we compare Internet prices in Russia and Azerbaijan, we will see that in Russia you can buy one megabit/s for less than 200 dollars whereas in Azerbaijan Internet clubs have to pay 200 manats (229.35 dollars) for 256 kilobit/s! The difference is noticeable. Hence, low speed, other numerous problems and complaints from the giant army of Azerbaijani users.

Unfortunately, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications says all the time that it is impossible to regulate Internet tariffs in an administrative way. The state cannot control the prices as the private sector is operating in this sphere. Thus, the cost of using the worldwide web directly depends on the number of users and living standards. In other words, if the number of users increases, the prices will fall. And the ministry can only help the private sector in this issue.

We should add that there are only two state-owned providers in Azerbaijan: Aztelecom.net and Bakinter.net. At the same time, broadband Internet services are not developing in the country because the ministry does not issue Wi-Max licences.

Nonexistent competition

According to Gunduz, Azerbaijan is currently going through not a revolutionary, but an evolutionary stage of development. If the .az domain costs 30 manats today, it will probably cost 5-7 dollars in the near future. To this end, the number of users should be higher than just 3,000. "The most important thing is that many Internet providers who have technical possibilities join this process. Then there will be competition and a fall in prices," Gunduz thinks.

In the opinion of the leader of Azerbaijan's Internet community, Galib Gurbanov, the price of Internet services in the USA, Canada and Europe is low because people there make 80 or 90 per cent use of local resources whereas 90-95 per cent of users in Azerbaijan and other developing countries use servers located in Europe, America, Turkey and so on. In this way, they are using international communications channels. The reason for the small number of resources in the .az zone is that Internet resources in Azerbaijan are weak. "With an increase in local resources and therefore, resources in the .az zone, the provider will lower the price of support for the domain, which will stimulate the expansion of the zone," Gurbanov said.

In order to avoid making allegations, we should observe that the development of Internet resources is mentioned in such documents as the state programme on the development of information technology in Azerbaijan, the national information and communications technologies strategy (NICTS) and the law "On telecommunications".

"We have to make every effort to develop Internet resources, to stop them from flowing abroad and to create the most favourable conditions for users. Because of the low speed and expensive traffic, potential clients are forced to resort to foreign hosting services. So it is high time to oversee the problem of domains at the highest level, including the current communications tariffs," the head of the MCIT department for radio frequencies, Aflatun Mammadov, thinks.

Another aspect - hosting services are provided by four Internet providers, four web studios (which actually should be engaged only in designing websites) and three companies. Hence the problem - administration of the .az domain zone. It is no secret to anyone that de facto work to issue domains has been carried out by the company Intrans and de jure by Az.com. However, until recently there was a huge gap here from a legal point of view. But thank God, it was filled by the administrator of the domain zone - the MCIT, the Internet community and the Internet forum of Azerbaijan, as well as the Institute for Information Technology of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan. Of course, Intrans will be engaged in this work in the future as well, but now - with such authoritative support - the issue of domains will become much better organized and civilised.

The administrator of the domain zone will only make sure that the market is as liberal as possible and that a national Internet address is registered according to international standards. In Gunduz's opinion, the problem of high prices for the .az domain will also be solved in this case.

What is more, an initiative organisation for Internet registration has already been set up in Azerbaijan. Mammadov said. "It has been formed and is expected to get legal status in the near future," Mammadov pointed out. The organisation is planning to take measures to lower domain prices, move the DNS (dynamic network server) from the USA to Azerbaijan and take other measures to develop Internet services in Azerbaijan.

The director of the Institute for Information Technology of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Rasim Aliguliyev, thinks that the time will come when the market of website names with the .az domain will become as big as car registration numbers. Our own market of domains will appear as well just like in all civilised countries of the world. There will be both "elite" and maximum simplified domains. So hurry up and buy resources in the national domain zone!