Indian web users may soon be able to register domain names in all 22 languages used in the country, it has been claimed.
According to the Business Standard, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) may give the necessary approval by mid-2012.
The Indian government is set to approach ICANN for internationalised domain names in Sindhi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Oriya, Malayalam, Manipuri and Assamese.
“Once we get ICANN’s approval, the central government, along with the department of information technology and Nixi, would look into the applications and usage of domain names in the local languages,” explained Mahesh Kulkarni, associate director in the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing’s graphics and intelligent script technology.
“Getting the ICANN’s approval is just the first step. After this, we would need the required infrastructure and administrative experience,” he stated.
ICANN first approved the use of internationalised domain names in 2009, allowing languages such as Arabic and Cyrillic to be used in URL extensions.