Arabic language domains to spur growth of internet in Middle East

Abu Dhabi: More people in the Middle East will be accessing the internet in the near future thanks to the introduction of an internet address system in local languages which includes Arabic, officials told Gulf News on Tuesday.

Internet penetration in the Middle East is currently 23 per cent of the population. However, the introduction of internet addresses in Arabic will improve it.

This was said by two officials at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - Karle Valente, communication product services director, and Baher Esmat, regional relations manager for the Middle East.

"You will be able to create web address names in the Arabic alphabet... Currently Arabic names are used as internet addresses but they are in the English alphabet," Esmat said.

Such developments would improve internet access in other parts of the world as internet addresses could be formed from non-Latin based languages that include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Hindi, he said.

In China, 95 per cent of internet content is in the Chinese language, something that shows the influence of the local language, Esmat said.

The two ICANN officials spoke to Gulf News on the sidelines of a meeting organised by ICANN at the Sheraton Corniche Hotel in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

ICANN is a non-profit corporation which coordinates the internet's identifiers around the world.

It has participants from all over the world, promotes competition and develops policy on the internet's unique identifiers.

Presenting an overview of the new initiatives at the meeting, Valente noted that the Arab world's access to Arabic language domain names for the first time is a ground-breaking development that marks the next stage in the evolution of the internet.

"It eliminates another barrier to its use by groups of society," she said.

The programmes will also allow greater options for local and international companies and brands that are considering extending their online presence in the region.

"Companies can establish their brand online in the name they're best known to their target audience. Today, when some companies begin to build their online presence, they are forced to use English-language names which may not be familiar," Esmat said.