Bahrain has been connected to the internet since 1995, and made it readily available to its citizens. The country’s domain suffix is ‘.bh‘. A 2004 study showed a liberal filtering system is used in Bahrain, one which can be easily bypassed, however more recent events have shown more sophisticated and pervasive filtering. In January 2009, Bahrain has started blocking a vastly increased number of sites through the Information Affairs Authority (IAA). The new filtering has had a noticeable impact in internet access speeds for all traffic.
In 2010, there were about 694,000 internet users in Bahrain, or 55% of the population. According to the World Bank, over 90% of the population is connected to the internet between 2010-2014. This later rose to 96.4% (an estimated 1.29 million online) in 2015, thus making Bahrain the country with the highest internet penetration percentage in the Middle East.