As can be noted most selected sectors have no web sites and the evolution is slow for those sectors that do have web sites. This can be explained by the fact that there is only a pilot project for the Internet in Syria with no ISP’s except the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE), which runs the pilot project (5000 subscribers), and the Syrian Computer Society (SCS), which recently opened subscription to its members and university professors (2500 subscribers). Thus, there is no possibility of having Internet web servers except at STE and at SCS. Given these limitations, STE cannot handle requests for creating web sites on their servers, and SCS is constrained to limit their services to its membership and university professors, thus cannot host web sites.

For the above-mentioned reasons, all web servers regarding Syrian institutions (public and private), except that of STE and that of SCS, are hosted outside the country. This is the major difficulty facing any establishment that would like to create a web site. Other obstacles are the limited local expertise in creating professional web sites and updating them regularly as well as the cost and payment in hard currency. All these difficulties, added to the fact that Internet access is limited on the national level, explain the small number of established web sites. Only those institutions that aim audience abroad made concrete steps towards establishing web sites.

It is expected however that a boom in web sites will take place after the expansion of the Internet, i.e., once implementation of the national Internet backbone is completed (probably during the first half of 2001) and private ISPs are licensed to start their services. This will provide 50000 access points for the country by the end of 2001 and web sites should become widespread. For instance, once that backbone becomes available, the Ministry of Education intends to have a web site in addition to nearly 2000 Internet access points in public schools around the country.