This is just a reminder for those who haven’t seen this on my Twitter, the TRA has extended the period for receiving responses to it’s public consultation paper of the regulation of VOIP, anybody upset about Skype being blocked here should write the TRA about this now! The new deadline is the 10th of October.
You can read the response I wrote to the TRA here.
First of all, a reminder to all of you that the deadline for submitting your response to the TRA’s public consultation paper on VoIP is the 10th of September. If you are one of these people who have been bitching about having Skype blocked in Oman for all these years then it is time you do something about it and write to the TRA why you think Skype should be unblocked.
I have written a draft response, which you can download from here, if you guys have any suggestions or points to add please let me know! Will try to send this in sometime next week.
The TRA has published a public consultation paper on the use of VoIP in Oman and it is now that everyone comes out and sends something to the TRA to tell them why exactly Skype has to be unblocked. The deadline for submitting your comments is the 10th of September. You can download the public consultation paper here.
The TRA has published a public consultation on the introduction of a policy to regulate the use of public wifi hotspots in order to encourage the spread of freely accessible wifi networks in public places to help increase the internet penetration in the country. The consultation paper asks for feedback regarding all aspects of the policy include locations where such hot spots would be necessary, the mechanism for businesses to make profit out of such hotspots, the authentication of users, and whether or not the government should itself help in funding hotspots in locations where it might not make business sense to make one. The deadline for responding is the 30th of November, you can view the PDF file via this link. Send your feedback ro this email address uso@tra.gov.om .
It is good to see that the government realises that free broadband internet is necessary and that it is not widely distributed, imagine if you had free wifi all over the Love Lane or other touristy places such as Souq Mattrah or even Qurum Park. That would be really awesome. If you have any ideas to share with the TRA please send them by email to the address mentioned above!
Even though many people dislike the policies made by the TRA (e.g. the upcoming ban of VPN) , I am one of the greatest fans of the TRA’s initiative to involve the public in the policy making process.
Even though Oman is still an absolute monarchy, the approach of the government over the years has been to slowly introduce venues for the public to participate in the policy making process to move Oman towards a more democratic system. Some might think that the development is way too slow, but it is there.
There are many examples of this starting from the establishment of the Shura Council, the passing of a Basic Statute of the State, and the development of role of the Oman Chamber of Commerce to allow the industry to lobby for changes in the law.
TRA has been brave enough to publish online draft regulations before they are passed so that the public is (a) aware of them before they are passed as law, and (b) able to comment on them and send feedback to the TRA. It is true that there is no guarantee that the TRA will accept any recommendations made by the public, but the fact that comments made by the public and the TRA’s responses to these comments are published online adds so much to the transparency of the process and helps us understand what the government is thinking.
According to my knowledge the TRA is the only government authority that does this, and I really applaud them for taking this initiative as it is in my opinion the greatest step made in involving the public in policy making process.
This is a reminder for all of those interested in .OM domain names, the deadline for submitting feedback to the TRA’s public consutlation paper on .OM domain name framework is November 8th (Next Saturday). So if you have any opinion on how domain names in Oman are regulated then please take a moment to read this and send your feedback.
You can download the proposed framework from here (Warning PDF link).
The Tender Board made a press release today (Arabic Text) in which it announced the values of all the tenders that were recently approved for upcoming government projects: One worth 5 milion Omani Rials was approved for doing additional works for the expansion of the Internet broadband coverage to provide the services for a 100,000 users.
Here is the actual text in Arabic:
الاعمال الاضاÙية على المناقصة رقم 1172006 توسعة شبكة النطاق العريض لتوصيل خدمة الانترنت لعدد 100 ال٠مشترك بمبلغ وقدره 000ر000ر5 ر.ع.
These 5 million rials are for additional works for this tender, which presumably has started years ago (for another separate sum). It is unclear if these “additional works” are to expand the broadband network to a greater number of users (So this 100K could be an additional to the existing number from the previous tender) or to do something else completely (e.g. unforeseen changes required for the infrastructure, 100K users are those that had access to it from before and the access wil not expand to new users).
I do not know if this project is managed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC) or the Telecom Regulation Authority (TRA).
Khaled decides to create a restuarant in Al Khode which he names “Cisco”. He applies for a trademark for the term Cisco under the one of the categories related to restaurants and catoring services. Cisco’s trademark is not violated because nobody would think that Cisco the restaurant is the same as Cisco the technology company.
The TRA announced two days ago the opening of a public consultation paper (Direct link to PDF) on the registration and usage of the .OM top level domain. In this public consultation paper the TRA shows us the regulations they are proposing and welcome any feedback from anyone in the public. They have no obligation to listen to what we say, but they might consider it. If you have any problems with the way domain names are registers this is your opportunity to speak up and tell them how you think it should be done.
An article posted yesterday on CNNMoney.com titled ‘ the Man Who Owns the Internet‘, uncovered the real story behind the Search.om Oman proposal I wrote about last month.
Kevin Ham is a very big domainer, ie a person who is in the business of buying domain names of generic keywords, trademarks, and popular misspelled variations of these to make profit off advertisement placed on parking pages or by later reselling the domain names for huge amounts of money. This sort of activity is not illegal when it does not involve cybersquatting (the registration of a domain name that includes a trademark owned by another), but it is widely considered immoral as the domainer makes profit by the typos people make when trying to access popular domain names whose owners worked hard to make their website names popular.
This guy, Kevin Ham, has gone a step further in the domain name game and managed to convince the government of Cameroon to install the search.om-like-wildcard to make all traffic attempting to access unregistered domains under the .cm extension to be redirected to his advertisement filled website.
Millions and millions of people access by mistake unresolved .cm domains when trying to type a .com website. Kevin Ham is making crazy amounts of profit by taking advantage of typos of generic and trademarked words and proper trademarks that are not registered under the .cm extension. He is not strictly doing anything illegal in the traditional sense because he did not register any offending domain name (ie one that contains a trademark), but he is getting all the traffic from these websites because the trademark holder did not register the domain name. To cure the problem, the trademark holder would have to register the domain, which is, at least in theory but not necessarily in practice in Cameroon, something relatively easy to do.
Only the government of Cameroon can do something about this because it owns the .cm TLD. A few other countries in the world have a similar incidental advantage through typos, namely Colombia (.co) and, here it comes, Oman (.om), all of which are very common typos of the world’s most popular TLD, the dot com (.com).
Kevin Ham is obviously going to pay a lot of money to Oman, and he has apparently made an offer, but we should contribute to the unfair practices of such a shady business, he is clearly taking advantage of the greatest trademarks whose owners have not yet registered their domain names, he is would probably be misleading many visitors to think that they have visited the websites they attempted to access.
The .om TLD is a digital web gold mine, it is a national property, we do not need Kevin Ham’s money and should not let him have such control over it.
Read more about Kevin Ham and his dirty business here:
The .cm Scam
WIPO Arbitration Case Involving Kevin Ham
Yahoo Outsmarts Google in Cameroon Domain Play
The man who owns the Internet
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