Now, get Internet domain names in regional languages

Business Line
August 27, 2014

The Government on Wednesday launched Bharat domain name in devanagri script covering several languages including Hindi, Bodo, Dogri, Mailthali, Marathi, Konkani, Nepali and Sindhi.

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) will soon also launch the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) in other Indian languages like Bangla, Urdu, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati.

While NIXI is takes care of the domain names in India, globally Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the Internet domain names and Internet protocol numbers.

"Most of the future expansion of the Internet is going to come from Asia, Africa and the developing world. Local languages, content and culture will increasingly become important themes for the future expansion of the Internet. Mobile devices and applications as well as social media will be important determinants of this growth," Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology said here at the launch.

He said one of the important requirements for Internet growth is the proliferation of content in the local languages and growth of the websites in local languages has direct bearing with the development of content in local languages.

"Depiction of the URL of the website in local language will further go a long way in ensuring inclusive growth of Internet. I am sure with the launch of .Bharat in devanagri script would go a long way in spurring the Internet growth and digitising India in an inclusive manner," Prasad said.