E-commerce nd Internet industry in Afghanistan: Part 2 Final, www.beonlinesolutions.com

Sept. 16, 2010 - PRLog -- Now let us tell some words about the access speed, cost, and web surfing. The registration of country specific domains is largely controlled by monopolies, and prices vary widely from country to country. In Afghanistan Ministry of Communications has raised Telecom Development fund, which will be used to expand the telecom infrastructure to rural areas where the private sector is not willing to go. The telecom service providers are contributing 2.5% of their net profit to this fund. The cctld in Afghanistan is controlled by the Afg Nic and is open to the private sector to resell. The tariffs for foreigners and Afghans are different, which enables Afghans to buy and use the AF widely. Nearly in all developing countries and developed countries, phone calls are charged per one minute, and often are extremely expensive. When people in these countries use dial-up connections to reach the Internet, they must then pay access fees as well as these phone charges. Since the speed of their Internet connections is relatively slow, it takes longer to download email and web pages - which means it is more expensive, and fewer people can participate. Additionally, web pages (and email) are becoming increasingly graphic-heavy and "large" in terms of file size. For the United States and Europe, with steadily increasing bandwidth, this is not a problem. For other countries it means that, all other things remaining equal, it can actually become more expensive to use the Internet over time.
It’s widely known that from the very beginning of the Internet despite the underlying and increasing diversity of its users the English language was predominating. Just over 50 percent of all Internet users are native English speakers. The dominance of English, and especially US content, makes it less useful to other countries. Additionally, non-English countries produce less local content making the Internet less relevant to their lives, and less as a tool of self-expression and local communication. And, without any English language knowledge, most people in Afghanistan cannot participate in e-commerce, since "English is, overwhelmingly, the language of e-commerce" and almost 94% of pages pointing to secure servers (sites capable of doing e-commerce) are in English. Afghanistan government has also felt the need to address this issue and has initiated a project for the UNICODE of official languages of the country, which will enable the development of the local content which will contribute to the usage of the ICT in the country.
Well, the use of e-commerce in Afghanistan is not common, but there are certain afghan owned online services, which provide facility to buy and sell afghan handicrafts. Comparing Afghanistan with the neighboring countries there is significant difference. Countries like Pakistan and India has well defined number of online services owned by the government, public and private sector. Ministry of Commerce and Communications of Afghanistan will start a joint project to establish the Electronic Certification Authority and develop the e-legislation and the Government portal project will be linked to this project in order to start the e-services. For example, without considerable infrastructure, access, training, and resources to develop and administer e-commerce websites, significant e-commerce is simply impossible.
Concerning the e-payment systems, Afghanistan doesn’t have its own services, but citizens use the international payment systems, such as PayPal or WebMoney, Moneybokers.  But the usage is not on an advanced level and definitely has to be improved. Concerning the online shopping it’s not widely used in a country as well. Just a couple of sites, like http://www.BeOnlineSolutions.com, can provide such online services.
However the country is on the road to recovery and is making great progress in different areas including ICT sphere: on December 18, 2005, the new Telecom Law of Afghanistan was put in place. This law governs telecom only services. The MCIT has drafted an ICT Law that will address issues such as IP, digital signatures, e-commerce, e-government, IPR and cyber security. And though online services are not yet popular in Afghanistan due to the lack of electricity and the lack of local content, there are a number of websites that provide information about policies, regulations and development projects to the public and to the international community. Some good examples are the national website of the Office of the President (www.president.gov.af), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (www.mfa.gov.af), Afghanistan Reconstruction and Development Services (www.ards.gov.af), Afghanistan National Assembly (www.nationalassembly.af) and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (www.mcit.gov.af). The government has put together a unified development strategy called the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) (www.ands.gov.af). It covers security, governance, rule of law, human rights, and economic and social development. The MCIT has developed a concept called e-Afghanistan, which focuses on the utilization of ICT to achieve the goals set in the ANDS. E-Afghanistan covers the development of e-government, national portals, e-commerce and ICT governance.

So we are hopeful that the development of ICT and other online services that has started recently will lead to the advancing of e-commerce in Afghanistan that will let it to participate more actively in the process of the global e-commerce.

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BeOnline Solutions Inc is a no.1 web design, web development, ecommerce development, e-store developers, web hosting, domain name registrar and search engine optimization company of Peshawar, Pakistan offer high quality Web Solutions and services to world wide customers and especially engaged in promotion of web based E-Commerce, E-Business both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.