Dubai: Even though the Arabic language is booming online, it is still facing access challenges.
Out of the 380 million Arabic speakers, only 36 per cent are online.
“While the current 36 per cent have been largely bilingual English/Arabic capable, we can expect the next 64 per cent to be English illiterate. Navigating the internet using Latin-script .com domain names is holding back the next 243 million Arabic web users who expect to use the net in their native language,” Mohammad Zeidan, General Manager of registry services ARI MENA FZ-LLC and internet technology company behind .shabaka (in Arabic means .web), told Gulf News.
The Middle East region has seen internet penetration growth of more than 3,300 per cent between 2000 and 2014 and is now home to a whopping 112 million internet users. There are more than 136 million Arabic-speaking internet users globally, representing 36 per cent of the total Arabic-speaking population.
He said that the problem is that while web use is set to surge among Arabic speakers, only three per cent of the current content online is actually in Arabic.
Arabic is not growing as fast as English as the Arabic websites started much later.
He said the fragmentation of the Arabic language further complicates the process of “consolidating and indexing” online Arabic content.
“What we need is an end-to-end Arabic online experience for the Arabic speaking community. This means an Arabic keyboard to type in an Arabic domain name to visit Arabic content, without a reliance on English or Google,” he said.
“The market is huge and the potential is there. Around 55 per cent of the searches on Google are done in Arabic. We are not supporting our language. It is going to happen, albeit at a slower pace,” he said.
According to a CSA report, only one in 20 Fortune 500 websites had Arabic content in 2012, and only one in four top 100 global brands offered Arabic versions of their sites.
He said the solution is Arabic domain names which eliminate the reliance on traditional Latin script domain names like .com and instead allow Arabic speakers to navigate in their own language.
The introduction of .shabaka marked a significant milestone for the Arabic language online and companies such as etisalat, Rotana, Rebel and Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group have already adopted the new names to align their brands more closely with their local customers online.
There are a number of countries already hosting Arabic script domains, including the UAE, Oman and Qatar. These national digital assets are of “enormous value” to their respective countries and the citizens who access the internet through them. However, they are being underutilised and are limited to the boundaries of the individual countries — stifling region-wide participation.
He said the reason they are doing this is because .shabaka provides an emotive connection between Arabic culture and the community while opening an online channel to intuitively connect Arabic speakers to native content.
Initiatives such as .shabaka are helping to bridge the gap between “Arabic content and Arabic speaking internet users”. It helps provide the platform needed to fuel greater Arabic oriented online entrepreneurism and innovation.
He was speaking at the discussion hosted by internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Monday focusing on a number of important issues that relate to the development of the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) in the Middle East.
The panel discussed the unprecedented expansion of the Domain Name System (DNS), launched nearly two years ago, which will result in the introduction of over 1,000 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).
The new gTLD programme was launched in 2011 and the Middle East’s domain name industry is now entering a significant phase with Arabic Top-Level Domains like — .shabaka, .mawque (in Arabic means .site) and .etisalat.
Top-Level Domains are letters after the final dot of a domain name like .com, .ae and .net.
As the internet is now essential to the way users connect with friends and family, the way they do business and the way they learn about new cultures, this new system, called the new generic Top-Level Domain programme (gTLD) will likely affect everyone who uses the internet in some way.
In 2013, ICANN rolled out domains in Arabic, Chinese, German, Russian and Cyrillic scripts.
So much so, domain names have to play catch up given the swelling ranks of web sites and their users, There are more than 160 million active websites, and 111 million of them are dot-coms.
All this is about to change with more than 1,300 new domains going to be live. Out of that 605 new domains are now live.
Zeidan said that 2,200 names have been registered under.shabaka and this number are growing slowly than we expected it to be. Out of this, around 1,000 are live now.
This project is being overseen by ICANN.
Abdul Rahman Al Marzouqi, Manager internet Advancement, Policy Programs Department at TRA UAE, said that there are 130,000 domain names registered in the UAE and it is number one in the Arab World.
There are lots of “potential to grow” and “we have registered a 33 per cent month-to-month growth in the first quarter in registering for .ae,” he said.
“.dubai, .abudhabi and .arab will play a very power role towards the Expo 2020 and in creating global identities for SMEs,” Baher Esmat, ICANN’s vice-president for stakeholder engagement in the Middle East.
“Some companies in the Middle East have already embraced .shabaka and .etisalat to enhance their brand presence and offer new ways of communicating with and servicing their customers,” he said.
The domain namespace will only operate in Arabic script on the internet and end users will only be able to use it by typing in Arabic. For example, Al Jazeera.shabaka, abc.etisalat or CNN.shabaka.
The only domain name that is live in the UAE is .shabaka and .etisalat is in the final phase of testing.
He said the Middle East market is still young when it comes to business and services pertaining to internet domain names. Today, more than ever, the world is “more dependent” on the internet economy and the future of the Middle East lies in the hands of its young population who knows how to harness technology innovations to drive economic growth.
He said the challenges the new gTLD programme will address are the internet of Things, IPv6, personalisation and localisation.
“Mena is still an underserved region. That is why awareness and understanding of the new gTLDs and their impact on business and brands is essential to grasp the opportunities at hand with this expansion,” Zeidan said.
According to Munir Badr, CEO of AEServer, one of the accredited domain name registrars under the TRA for .ae, said that there is need to develop more Arabic contents to enhance the domain registrations from the public.
