Russian expert: Non-Latin character names key to Internet internationalization

The decision to allow non-Latin characters in domain names "is an important step for the internationalization of the Internet," says an expert with the Russian domain name registration center.

Andrey Vorobiev, the RU-Center public relations department manager, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the number of Internet users could greatly increase thanks to the decision.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses, agreed to allow the use of scripts not based on Latin characters in registering top-level domain names. That decision came at the conclusion of a week-long meeting in late October in Seoul.

Vorobiev, who had attended the meeting, said Russia now has around 2.5 million domain names with the suffix of ".ru."

However, similar to countries like South Korea or regions such as Africa and the Middle East that use non-Latin characters, the expert said, a remarkable number of Russian netizens were familiar with neither the Latin characters nor the rules to convert Russian characters into Latin ones.

Therefore, domain names that consist of Latin characters have restricted the development of Internet in those countries and regions, and the ICANN decision could change that situation, he said.

"Now that all countries can write their URL addresses in their own languages, this decision is an important step for the internationalization of the Internet," Vorobiev said. "The days have passed when people who don't understand Latin alphabet cannot use the Internet."

Vorobiev said that as planned, Russia will start to register Russian top-level domain names for the country's national institutions and enterprises from Nov. 25. Those domain names would be initiated between December and next February.

Many enterprises, including foreign ones, have already applied for registration, he said. In order to prevent cyber squatting, Russia will employ a bidding system in the domain names application.

Russia also has planned to set up two technical support centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and two domain management assistance centers in New York and Hong Kong, he said.