The historical development of the emergence of the Internet in the city of Erbil - an analytical study

Abstract

This study is an analytical study aims to identify the foundation and development of the Internet in Iraq in general and in particular the city of Erbil in the Kurdistan Region / Iraq, and the study relied on the analytical and statistical method. At the beginning the Internet appeared in the sixties of the twentieth century in America in the units of the US Army, it was a primitive network called "ARPANET" (ARPA) used for transferring data among computers at that time, then it developed in the seventies into a network called " NSF” (NSF), which has witnessed great developments in the world of communications recently. After (2000), the Internet infrastructure mostly became static, and the progress became more evident at the level of software and services provided by the Internet. Static Internet pages evolved into dynamic pages by depend on different programming languages, which paved the way for the emergence of a new generation of Internet services and social networking sites on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Nonetheless, the Internet is considered new in Iraq, ranked as last Arab country to provide the Internet commercially since (2000) due to the conditions went through therefore, the communication and Internet service faced complex situations compared to the communication service in the Arab countries. Erbil city is the current capital of the Kurdistan Region / Iraq, has undergo same situation that Iraq went through in the past years in terms of providing communication services and Internet networks, after (2003) communications and Internet networks became common services; because the access  of modern communications technology became easy for civilians, initially computers  linked to the Internet networks of government institutions, and then it witnessed an unusual growth of the Internet cafes. As a result of prosperity and stability in the region, the first telecommunications company was established under the name of Korek Telecom Company in the year (2001), while the Asia Cell Company increased its subscribers in Erbil in the year (2006), and then Tarin Net Company was established.

According to Central Statistical institution of Iraq in (2022), the users of social media platforms in Iraq reached (28) million and (350) thousand users, (67.9%) males and (32.1%) females. The “Tik Tok” platform, which is the famous platform reached (20) million and (160) thousand users, the age between (10-19) years constituted (25%) of the overall users . The “Facebook” platform ranked second among platforms Social communication with (18) million (850) thousand user accounts, out of the total population of Iraq for the year (2022), while the number of mobile phone users reached (42) million and (540) thousand users, and the number of Internet users is (20) million and (580) thousand users throughout Iraq for the same year.

Key words: Internet, stages of development and internet growth, Internet users , Erbil city