S'pore starts trial on multilingual domain names

The move by the country's central registrar Singapore Network Information Center (SGNIC), is in line with the country's aim of becoming a regional infocomm hub according to an official from the center.

Mr Lim Choon Sai, general manager for SGNIC, noted that multilingual Internet domain names (IDN) could help pave the way for businesses to make inroads into the Chinese and Indian markets, both of which have been opening up in recent years.

The six-month trial started yesterday, and is open to individuals and organizations both here and overseas. Overseas applicants will need to have a Singapore-based contact in order to participate.

After the trial period, all registered IDNs will be purged from the system as SGNIC assesses the market demand for a commercial launch of such domain names.

IDNs will be reflected with an ".idn.sg" extension so as not to affect the current list of .sg domain names. For instance, SGNIC's IDN will be represented as in the Chinese language.

Interested applicants can register for the IDN trial with the two SGNIC-accredited domain name registrars participating in the trial--IP Mirror or Vooju. SingNet is also conducting its own trial with some selected existing customers. For more details of the IDN trial and how to participate in it, refer to the SGNIC Web site.