Fast track to internet domains in own alphabet

The Register reports that certain countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are on the fast track to net domains that use their own alphabets. This week, at the Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro, ICANN announced that it's cranking an effort to provide certain very important nations with "country code top-level domains" that use "internationalized domain names." In ICANN speak, these are known as IDN ccTLDs. But you can think of them as web addresses that uses non-Latin characters. "There are certain countries that clearly need to have an IDN representation of their territory as soon as possible," Chris Disspain, the country code manager for Australia and the chair of ICANN's Country Code Names Supporting Organization, told us, as he was jetting out of Brazil. "So we've working on a fast track approach that will give those countries IDN ccTLDs sooner rather than later." Those countries include China, Taiwan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, The United Arab Emirates, and various other Arab nations. Disspain and ICANN have been testing IDNs for the past two weeks, and they hope to finalize a plan for these big-name countries within the next six months.