In a move described as the biggest technical change to the Internet since its creation, domain names will soon be open to non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic, Chinese or Hindi.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global non-profit group that regulates the Internet, voted to approve the decision at a public meeting in Seoul on Friday.

Domain names are the final letters in a Web address, such as .com or .org. Current technological limitations restrict these letters to the Latin alphabet.

Under the new rules, which could take effect as early as Nov. 16, governments or their representatives could submit applications for "internationalized" domain names in other alphabets.

Globalization and localization

The use of domain names will also eventually include municipal suffixes, such as ".berlin," ICANN board chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said in a press conference.

Giving control of domain names to local authorities will make Web sites more credible to Internet users, he said.

More than half of the world's 1.6 billion Internet users use non-Latin based alphabets, according to ICANN, and opening the door to new scripts reflects the Internet's role in facilitating global communication.

"This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and a historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's president and CEO. "The Internet is about bringing the world together and this will facilitate that effort."

acb/dpa/AFP/Reuters
Editor: Chuck Penfold