26th June 2007
Foreign domains 'may soon be allowed'
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is holding meetings this week in Puerto Rico to discuss possible additions to the internet system and its domain name suffixes.
These changes may allow overseas businesses to register domain names with foreign characters such as letters with accents or those in different scripts.
At the moment, the internet is limited to letters in the English alphabet which puts Arabic, Greek and Chinese firms at somewhat of a disadvantage.
Paul Twomey, from ICANN, said some key policy issues need to be addressed before this move can be made, such as questions over how many suffixes each country is allowed.
Engineers have been working on testing whether non-English scripts will disrupt users' ability to use the web and all applicants would go through an initial review phase so that objections can be raised, on the grounds of suffixes being too similar to ones already in use or them being racist.
However, some domain name suffixes have already been rejected by ICANN, including .xxx for porn sites.
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