The next billion internet users are not going to be English-speaking, so the next big batch of new domain names will be in Arabic, Chinese or Cyrillic; Australian firm ARI Registry Services is the technology provider for four of the TLDs in the first batch to pass ICANN evaluation

March 26, 2013 Leave a comment

First new top domains Arabic, Chinese

March 25, 2013 – 8:04PM

Trevor Chappell, AAP

The next billion internet users are not going to be English-speaking, so the next big batch of new domain names will be in Arabic, Chinese or Cyrillic.

The global governing body for domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has completed its evaluation of the first 27 of 1,898 new Top Level Domains (TLDs).

All 27 are in scripts other than Roman script, which is used for the English language.

The new TLDs are expected to join .com, .net and .au on the internet once they get approval from government advisory bodies, the applicants sign the ICANN registry contract, and the TLDs undergo technical testing.

Australian firm ARI Registry Services is the technology provider for four of the TLDs in the first batch to pass ICANN evaluation.

ARI Registry Services chief executive Adrian Kinderis said ICANN was giving priority to applications for TLDs that diversified the geographic spread of the internet.

“Most Arab nations have all had to learn how to navigate (the internet) in English,” Mr Kinderis told AAP on Monday.

“These new Arabic names (and other non-Roman scripts) will first appeal to those who don’t know English.”

Mr Kinderis said the next billion internet users were not going to be English-speaking.

The new TLDs would enable a more rapid take-up of the internet by people who did not communicate in Roman script, which would hopefully generate more localised internet content.

Two of the four TLDs backed by ARI Registry Services are .web in Arabic, applied for by the International Domain Registry; and .arab in Arabic, applied for by the League of Arab States.

The other two are .catholic in Arabic and .catholic in Chinese – both applied for by the Pontifical Council for Social Communication.

Mr Kinderis said the Pontifical Council had submitted four applications: one each for TLDs in English, Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic (used in the Russian language).

“The Catholic church understands the importance of having an online presence,” Mr Kinderis said.

“They want to make sure that they are definitive, that end-users can understand that whatever content they are going to under .catholic, it’s genuine.”

Mr Kinderis said the first of the new TLDs would probably “go live” in early June.

Filed under TMT Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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