Meeting in UAE to discuss developments on Arabic domain names.

UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, announced that it is co-hosting the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Regional Meeting in cooperation with ICANN.
It states that ICANN is an internationally organised, public benefit
non-profit company responsible for the global coordination of the
Internet’s system of unique identifiers like domain names and the
addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols that help computers
reach each other over the Internet.

The company declared that a key topic to be discussed at the meeting
which will take place in Dubai, on 1-3 April 2008 is the possibility of
getting domain names in Arabic online and making them available to the
public. Further Participants will also discuss “finding ways to use
Arabic for domain names as well as the use of Arabic invisible
characters”, said TRA.

It also articulated that the ICANN community has been working on
Internationalized Domain Names to make close to 100,000 characters from
the scripts and languages of the world available for domain names. It
also adds that the other important topics at the Dubai meeting include
how ICANN works and what it does to coordinate the Internet?s unique
identifiers, as well as updates on what is happening in developing an
application and approval process for new top level domains; the part of
the domain name after the dot.

“ICANN had incredibly productive discussions at its recent meeting
in India on work being done to get the languages and scripts of that
country available for domain names from beginning to end,” said Dr Paul
Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO.

Dr Twomey added: “The ICANN community is working on how these
characters will be able to be implemented after the dot in domain
names. There also is a process being discussed among our communities
about whether there could be a fast track for a group of countries or
territories that have a need for IDNs earlier than the others.”

For his part, Mohamed Al Ghanim, TRA Board Member and Director
General said: “Being the legal registry of the UAE top level domain
name .ae, the TRA is keen on working to enhance the statues of the
national domain name in the IDN registry structure. Therefore, we
strongly believe that this ICANN Regional Meeting is going to help all
of us share experiences and work together to make that happen.”

“Internet penetration in the Arab world is considered very low in
comparison to the English speaking societies. One of the obstacles
facing the growth of this penetration is the language barrier. The TRA
evaluates the importance of the Meeting’s objectives on IDNs as the
best scientific way to provide the technological means to the UAE and
the Arab countries to share an easy, available and vast source of
knowledge with the goal of bringing Arabic to domain names,” Al Ghanim
concluded.