VeriSign Now Offers Domain Names in Over 350 Languages? Character Sets

📅 April 20, 2001 - A leading provider of Internet trust services, VeriSign Inc. (verisign.com) announced on Friday that its Registrar has begun accepting Domain Name registrations in more than 180 new languages, bringing the total number of languages in which users can register domain names to more than 350.
The largest expansion of the multilingual offering ever taken, the new advance will allow individuals and companies around the world to register domain names in languages including Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai and Urdu.
Since the VeriSign Global Registry Services Testbed opened in November of 2000, it has been used to register hundreds of thousands of multilingual domain names. And although the resolution of the multilingual domain names is still pending, the new domains are proving popular with businesses and individuals that expect to build commercial and personal sites for non-English speaking audiences. US companies, for example, have been registering the phonetic equivalents of their business names overseas.
And while the majority of the Web's content is currently geared toward English speakers, the situation is expected to change. According to an estimate by Analyst firm GlobalSight, non-English speakers will make up two thirds of all Internet users by 2003.
VeriSign says that the Internet is still in its early stages as a communication tool, adding that by making it easier for people around the world to use the Internet in their own language, the company feels it is taking a step toward making it a truly global medium.
While prior to the opening of the multilingual testbed domain names could only be comprised of letters and digits from the roman alphabet, following the new additions, VeriSign's registrar now offers domain names in the languages used by approximately 80 per cent of the world's population.