Bangladesh will soon make its national internet domains .bangla and .bd more widely accessible, according to Chief Adviser's Special Assistant Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, also in charge of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology. 

In a Facebook post, he also said that registry rights would remain with the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL), while resellers would be authorized to operate under them. “APIs are being developed for this purpose,” he added.

Tayeb noted that although millions of .bangla and .bd domains should have been hosted by now, only around 45,000 websites are currently active — including some 37,000 under .gov, .bangla, and .bd collectively, most of them belonging to government agencies. 

He described this as a near-total failure of the domain initiative, blaming mismanagement under the previous administration, which he said had blocked progress “for absurd reasons such as avoiding foreign travel.”

The adviser stressed that making the domains more accessible would help curb the outflow of foreign currency spent on international domain hosting.

He also announced that the .gov domain would be opened — subject to verification — for government and autonomous institutions, while .edu.bd could be made available for accredited educational institutions. The .com.bd reseller network will also be liberalized.

On other extensions, including .org.bd and additional variants of .bd and .bangla, Tayeb said decisions would be taken following consultations with BTRC and BTCL.

SMS/