Internet to speak Chinese in 2010

SHARM EL-SHEIKH. November 17. KAZINFORM If a special fast track process works well, the Chinese-speaking people could type in their mother tongue and get connected by 2010, said Rod Beckstrom, head of the governing body of Internet addresses, Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

"If they (the Chinese) have submitted the application now... then we would estimate, roughly at sometime in mid 2010," Beckstrom, president and CEO of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), told Xinhua on the sidelines of the 4th Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

    The ICANN, a nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses, agreed to allow the use of non-Latin characters in registering top-level domain names. The decision came at the conclusion of a week-long meeting in late October in Seoul.

    Earlier in the day, Beckstrom confirmed that ICANN has indeed received serious applications since it accepted non-Latin domain names registration at the end of October.

    "ICANN has received six applications for three languages, including Egypt and Russia," Beckstrom said at joint press conference with Tarek Kamal, Egypt's Minister of Information and Communications Technology.

    Kamal, who is also chair of the forum, had announced at Sunday's opening ceremony the launch of the first Arabic domain name. But the ICANN chief declined to reveal the nuts and bolts of the applicants, Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.chinvaiw.cn for furll version.