Only 20 out of 500 top-level Internet domains are in Arabic — ICANN

AMMAN — More online Arabic content and software to enable the use of Arabic letters are required to boost the usage of top-level domains (TLDs) in Arabic, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), said Sunday.

At present, there are more than 500 TLDs, of which, only 20 are in Arabic. For Internet users, the TLD is the suffix at the end of a domain name such as “.com” or “.net”.

One of the examples of the TLDs in Arabic is “.????” or “.shabakah” in Latin letters.

“Unfortunately, there is a shortage of Arabic content on the web and this affects the turnout on using TLDs in Arabic,” Baher Esmat, ICANN’s vice president for Middle East, said at a press conference to announce the Second Middle East Domain Name System Forum in Jordan, slated to open on Monday.

The number of TLDs is expected to exceed 1,000 in the next few years, and such domains include “.music”, “.hotels” and “.restaurants”, according to ICANN, the corporation that regulates the Internet’s address book.

Another challenge that faces the usage of Arabic domains is that some applications, such as Twitter, are not equipped to recognise Arabic letters, Esmat said.

“For example, if somebody posts a link to a story in Arabic and the link is all in Arabic letters, Twitter cannot recognise that as a link,” he noted, which calls for work on applications to increase acceptance of Arabic letters.

These issues as well as many challenges and opportunities facing the top level domains industry will be discussed at the two-day forum, which is hosted by the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organisation and is co-organised by ICANN and the Internet Society.

Experts from several countries will convene at the forum to discuss the Internet industry in the Middle East and the tapped business opportunities in the region.

Organisers of the event said it seeks to build bridges between interested parties in the region and international experts in the field by sharing experiences and best practices in the domain name industry at a global level, and of the emerging business opportunities.