Dubai: The UAE is set to become the first country worldwide to offer complete internet domain names in a language other than English by late next year.

Currently, efforts to this end by some countries, like in China, have achieved only partial success since the .com part of the URL (uniform resource locator) must still be in English. The new initiative, however, will allow the complete domain name to be in non-English letters.

“In [the] third quarter of 2009, we will start implementing the Arabic domain names,” Mohammad Al Zarouni, chief technology officer at the .ae Domain Administration of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) told Gulf News.

He added that the UAE “will very likely be the first country” worldwide where a complete non-English domain name would be available.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a worldwide organisation responsible for internet management worldwide, is finalising the process of assigning languages to countries, according to Al Zarouni.

Active efforts

He said that certain countries that are technically ready will be given the chance to start providing the service or domain names in the country’s national language. “The UAE is keen to be one of the pioneers for providing the domain name registration under the Arabic language.”

The UAE is an active member on some of the boards of ICANN and local authorities are working to ensure that they are the first to be allowed to offer complete domain names in Arabic, which would also make them the first country to do so in a language other than English.

Every country granted the permission to offer non-English domain names will be able to offer it in their national language. The UAE will be offering the names in Arabic.

The .ae domain name department of TRA is encouraging companies to adopt the .ae domain name, since they have opened up the market for more than one company to provide domain name registration under the domain name .ae.

source: gulfnews.com