Individuals can now register a website or a domain in their name, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) announced on Monday.
Officials at TRA also accredited Oman Data Park as the fourth domain name registrar. Oman Data Park joins Nawras, Omantel and Gulf CyberTech E- Solutions as accredited registrars for the country code top-level domain of the Sultanate of Oman (.om) and the Arabic domain of the Sultanate of Oman. Oman Data Park is a joint venture between Omantel and 4Trust LLC.
This authorises the companies to start receiving requests to register Internet domain names for both the .om and the Arabic domain. The accredited registrars are also mandated by the TRA to perform related services such as the update, transfer, removal and renewal of domain names.
Hilal Al Siyabi, director of international relations and media at TRA, said, "TRA puts in a lot of effort to introduce a draft Internet domain name and the development of procedures and regulations for registration in this project."
Al Siyabi added that the aim of this project was to make websites with the Omani identity as well as to encourage Arabic content.
Maitham Al Lawati, head of risk management at Oman Data Park, who elaborated further said, "We are excited to be the fourth domain name registrar in the Sultanate and offer our clients effortless and easy process to register their domain name through the online process.
"Besides that, Oman Data Park also offers other data services like email hosting, web hosting, share point hosting and free domain transfer," he added.
According to the new policy from TRA, individuals can also register their own domain name and it is available in two categories (.om- and its Arabic equivalent). In addition, individuals can have their unique upper domain in Arabic or Latin letters. For example: (www.Ahmad-AlBahri.om).
Zaynab Al Farsi, internet domain names manager at TRA, clarified, "Starting today, not only can enterprises register their domain name, but individuals are also welcome to do so."
Zaynab added, "People can register their upper domain in Arabic and also in their personal names, but TRA will not allow them to sell their domain names."
Officials from TRA said that there are around 2,000 registered domain names (.om) and more than 60 are in the Arabic domain.
