Fergie's Tech Blog

ICANN Approves .ASIA TLD

An AP newswire article by Anick Jesdanun, via The Globe and Mail, reports that:

The Internet will soon have a domain to unify businesses and other users in the Asia-Pacific region. A key oversight agency has approved a ".asia" domain for Internet addresses, supplementing suffixes available for individual countries, such as ".cn" for China and ".jp" for Japan. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers earlier approved ".eu" for the European Union.

Made up of groups that run domain names for China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries, the DotAsia Organization Ltd. plans to explore permitting domain names in Asian languages under ".asia." ICANN also has been exploring allowing suffixes in other languages, too, though that will take time and is unaffected by Wednesday's decision on ".asia."

Finalizing the contract between ICANN and DotAsia could take weeks. Registrations for English-language names is not expected for another six to nine months. Prices will vary, and trademark holders will get the first picks.

posted by Fergie @ 10/19/2006 12:35:00 PM