Tag: Domain names

Arab World Is A Step Closer To .Arab Domain Names

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The recent Arab Top Level Domain Names Steering Committee Meetings held in Damascus, Syria, saw the appointment of Mr. Ahmed Al Doseri, the representative of Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) as president of the Committee that comprises representatives from the Kingdom of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.

This Committee is tasked by the League of Arab States with the direct supervision and follow-up on the League’s application for the domains (.arab) and the equivalent in Arabic (.عرب).

TRA’s ICT Manager Mr. Ahmed Al Doseri, who chaired the steering committee meeting, commented, “The creation and use of a “.arab” or Arabic equivalent domain will ensure greater regional identity and over time will help to bridge the digital divide by encouraging Arabic content development and ease of navigation for those people who only read and write in Arabic.”

The international body that oversees internet names, Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN), announced in November 2009 that it will accept applications for non-Latin alphabet domains. This will bring the Internet much closer to the diversified locales of the world’s varied cultures.

Mr. Aldoseri also said “Bahrain will soon enjoy an Arabic domain (.البحرين), which will further contribute to overall Internet penetration in the Kingdom, and support the creation of local digital content.”

Egypt was the first Arab country to apply to get its own Arabic domain name (.مصر), followed by the UAE for (.امارات).

The steering committee is next scheduled to meet in Egypt during the period from the 24 to 28 January 2010 to follow-up on the agreed action points of its last meeting, and report on the progress of the League of Arab State’s application for Arabic domains.

Google Launches Google.ps Domain Name For Palestine

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GoogleGoogle just announced the addition of a new domain to their list of international domain names google.ps for Palestine.

The new domain will give Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories, who use Palestinian ISPs, access to Google in Arabic–and eventually, access to more locally-relevant content.

Local domain names are part of a bigger strategy for Google, they’re a first step towards making the web more accessible and relevant for users from around the world, providing local services to them wherever they happen to be.

Google.ps screenshot

Google has already previously launched a number of local domain names for other countries including Jordan, Morocco, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Libya among others and plans to continue doing so.

With the launch of google.ps, the total number of international Google domains goes up to more than 160.

Arabic Language Domains & Internet Growth In The Arab World

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A lot of talk has been going on these past couple of days about Arabic language domain names which should become possible within the coming year, with the major changes planned for the web addressing system, allowing the use of international scripts such as Arabic, Chinese and Hindi in domain names, as well as the liberalization of the registration process for top-level domains.

The Arab league already has plans to play a big role in the midst of all this by operating its own “.arab” domain, registered in Arabic and Latin characters.

The officials at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) think that this move will help boost internet growth in the region, as more and more Arabic speakers find it more accessible to them.

According to Baher Esmat, the Middle East relations manager of ICANN, “The next 10 million or 20 million Arab internet users will be those who do not speak English,” as “They will want to do everything in Arabic, including the addresses.”

Now even though I’m not really a supporter of the move to liberalize the registration of top-level domains, because of the big hassle and mess I fear it will create, I think the other change adding the possibility to use international scripts in domain names is a great step forward for the web addressing system.

I’m sure a lot of Arab websites will be registering web addresses in Arabic once it becomes possible next year, and it will be interesting to analyze the statistics and see how many people prefer using them.

Still, I’m not sure it’ll really have that big of an effect on internet growth in the region. I mean, is using a web address typed in Latin characters really a big barrier holding back people from getting online and surfing the web?
Of course, it’s more practical to just do everything in Arabic for many, but how many people do you think have skipped using the internet altogether just because they don’t want to type urls in Latin?

What do you think? Will Arabic domain names help boost internet growth in the region? Why?

ICANN Approves Big Changes To Internet Addressing System

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ICANNA couple of days ago, the Board of ICANN approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet’s addressing system.

Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we’ve all come to know well like .com, .org, .info; in addition to the country-specific TLDs (.uk, .tn, .ae, …etc).

The approved proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domains, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.

The expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world, enabling web addresses to be typed in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Upon approval of the implementation plan, it is planned that applications for new names will be available in the second quarter of 2009.

# Source: ICANN