ICANN to fast track launch of internationalized domain names

Posted on November 16th, 2007 by admin in Domain News | 1 Comment »

ICANN – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has announced its plans to fast track the launch of country coded top level domains (ccTLDs) and local language scripting at the internet governance conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil yesterday.

I blogged previously about the tests that ICANN performed testing the domain "test" in 11 different language codes – test written in Arabic, Indian, Japanese etc.

With the help of the Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO), ICANN is hoping to launch the internationalized domains as soon as possible.

"A lot of hard work has been done on IDNs (internationalised domain names) — and there is a technical evaluation of their impact on the root zone going on as we speak," said ccNSO chairman Chris Disspain in a statement.

Disspain went on to say that basically the IDNs will be developed on a first come first server basis.

"This fast-track process will really be driven by those who want to take part and get their name in their language on their internet in their country," Disspain said.

I think this is a very big development in the world of domain names.

For further information check out this article from ZDNet news.