The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) announced at a press conference that it has accredited Nawras, Omantel and Gulf Cyebertech E- Solutions as accredited registrars for the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Sultanate of Oman (.om) and the Arabic domain of Sultanate of Oman. The accreditation policy agreement that was signed by the companies and TRA authorises the companies to start receiving requests to register Internet domain names for both cctld (.om) and the Arabic domain. The accredited registrars were also mandated by the TRA to perform other related services such as update, transfer, removal and renewal of domain names. The TRA has identified categories for the domain names to be registered, this includes domain names assigned for commercial companies (com.om), public and private educational institutions (.edu.om), governmental bodies (.gov.om), non-profit organisations or community associations (.org.om), museums (.museum.om), professional associations (.pro.om), hospitals and medical institutions (.med.om). To register under the domain name (.net.om) the TRA states as a condition that the applicant is licensed to provide telecommunications services in the Sultanate, however governmental bodies and commercial companies in the Sultanate may directly register their websites under the domain names (.om) and in Arabic. It is worth mentioning that the TRA has placed a number of requirements on the accredited registrars and registrants, to facilitate the registration procedures. Commenting on the project, Mohamed al Kindi, Senior Manager of the TRA Technical Affairs Unit, said, "Accrediting registrars by the TRA enables all state institutions, private companies, and community associations to choose their addresses through accredited registrars, as there are more than one accredited registrar to complete the registration procedures which would create a competitive environment in terms of providing options for quality of service and preference in the selection of the appropriate price". Al kindi also said that the mechanism of registration with the accredited registrars allows institutions and companies in the Sultanate to check the availability of domains through a website allocated by the TRA for this project (www.registry.om) or through accredited registrars. On the importance of the Internationalised Arabic Domain Names project, Al Kindi said: "the use of Arabic language in electronic addresses would increase the number of users and access to this service by new segments of society" . He added that it is certain that the Arabisation of domain names is a very important step, which would bring the maximum benefit by enabling users to access Arabic content by using Arabic domain names without any language barriers starting from running a computer and down to Internet access .Al Kindi also said that the TRA has placed a number of requirements and standards on the accredited registers, and that companies have already started registering their websites through the accredited registrars. Oman Daily
