While it is true that there is much more to information technology than the Internet, it is the Internet that is driving the technology and also a large part of the global economy. In India, if a young entrepreneur wants a "dot in" TLD, he is in for a rude shock. The reason is that there are a whole lot of conditions that one has to meet before getting a country code TLD (CCTLD). Sample a few and it seems like a revisit to the licence era.
Generic names are not allowed under co.in sub-domain. Under this rule we would not have a yahoo.com or an amazon.com.The first thing that one does on the Internet is to register a domain name. In India, one has be registered with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) to get a domain name. It is like putting a bullock cart to an airplane. One knows the speed at which the RoC works. The result is that Indian start-ups would like to be registered as a "dot com" rather than a "dot in".
There is no registration fee to get a "dot in" domain name, which is no big deal. A "dot com" address can be had for $35 per annum. Many of the ICANN accredited registrars provide domain names for free and also include cheap hosting services. Some even give a lot of bandwidth free. With all these goodies which company will want to go in for a "dot in" TLD?
The other shocking condition to get a "dot in" TLD is that you should have an office in India. It is unbelievable that when the Internet is forcing a borderless world, the Indian registrar has this condition. But the most regressive condition is that a "dot in" domain is given only if the name server is in India and the services of an Indian Internet Service Provider are used.
Firstly, it is difficult to attract hosting to Indian ISPs with the kind of services they provide. Secondly, one needs boxes that can work with active server pages (ASP) an emerging global standard. India is far behind and only some ISPs have come as far as providing Common Gateway Interface (CGI) services. There are two things that India needs to do. The government needs to give incentives for setting up modern day web servers in India to host sites of dot COM, other TLDs and mirror sites in India. It must drastically cut bandwidth costs push web hosting to India. With top quality software professionals in India, it can be the best web-hosting destination in the world.
Second is about the most irritating Internet face that India shows to the globe under the "dot in" TLD requirements. Many things begin at home and to tell the world that we are a good web hosting destination, we must be able to attract Indian web entrepreneurs to go for a "dot in" TLD.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.