The Almighty IP

The high level domain nomenclature of Bahrain is .bh but with thousands of companies registered in Bahrain, hardly any (statistically) maintains or even bothers to register a .bh domain. Heck even the sole ISP (Batelco of the Iraqi sudden mobile service fame) maintain a .com as well as .com.bh domain!.

Let me try to explain why that is:

1. There is no one else that can provide a registry service in Bahrain, so why should Batelco care? Take it or leave it situation.
2. Costs:
   • Domain Registration:
     According to their website here only virtual domains are available. That has to come with their hosting package, you apparently cannot register and reserve a domain. It is also unclear if they will give you a domain only based on your commercial registration or otherwise.
   • Permanent IP Costs:
     Registration: BD 60 (US$ 160, once off) then monthly BD 100 (US$ 377) [+]
   • Hosting Costs:
     Exhorbitant! Have a look at this

Would any one be encouraged to register a domain in a situation like this? I doubt it. Add to that the fact that a country with less than 700,000 people Batelco insists on .com.bh, .net.bh and .org.bh! Why? Why couldn’t it just be plain and simple .bh? Revenue! That’s why. I mean if you can screw companies and individuals by forcing them to register the three high level domain names and getting money for it why the hell not? Who’s going to stop them?

Funny thing is that their main internet page cannot be accessed by simply entering http://inet.com.bh, it’s got to have that www in it. Do they not have the knowledge to make their site accessible by either name? I doubt it. And wouldn’t it be better for them just to have their sites as inet.bh? batelco.bh? As if they have dedicated the .net.bh and .org.bh for their philanthropic activities!

In the Emirates you can now have just .ae without the .co.ae, .net.ae or .org.ae.

In my view the registry should be completely disassociated from the ISP function, ideally as Bahrain is a very small country it should be franchised by the Communications Authority to several companies to promote competition and better consumer pricing.

Having a permanent IP address is so important for businesses and anyone who wants to run their website independently and to access files and server resources remotely, but for that we have to pay BD 100 (US$ 265) A MONTH plus the registration fees to our benevolent big brother. This in most cases equates to more than half of a small shop’s monthly rental. While the server you’re currently reading this on costs me US$240 per month including a fixed IP address, 20GB, 512MB RAM, and most importantly connected to big pipes to the internet. I run 5 sites off this server, handles more than 20 email and ftp accounts etc. Sure it’s expensive when compared with others in the market, but it was a good deal when I first got it.

Batelco has further complicated matters by blocking several free dynamic dns services like http://dyndns.org. This is completely unacceptable as it is a blatant abuse of the powers that it has by default, thus forcing us to either get their permanent IP addresses or forgetting the vast benefits that a permanent IP gives us as business people and individuals.

In fact in my view what Batelco is doing is tantamount to a crime against the growth of business in Bahrain and is actively forcing us to find alternatives outside of Bahrain thus get beholden to a foreign power for our livelihood. With their continuous vast profits they have absolutely no excuse for what they’re doing and the sooner we have internet deregulation here the better. Deregulating and opening up this vital medium to competition will most definitely be good for the Kingdom.

So instead of Batelco going head-to-head with the Iraqi authorities by providing free mobile services (they’re not, they’ve sunk some $5m in that enterprise which Batelco has taken from us, its long suffering customers,) they should look at their structure and methods in Bahrain to really promote it in the world, and give us webmasters and business people a break.

But they – as a profit making machine – will never do, the government of Bahrain should immediately put these issues under their microscopes and take the domain registration at least away from this monster.