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Three Middle Eastern countries have become the first to
obtain internet addresses entirely in non-Latin characters.
The arabic lettered domain names for Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates were added to the internet's master directories
this week. It's the first major change to the internet domain name
system since its creation in the 1980s.
Registrations for websites to use those names are to
begin soon. Egypt granted three companies approval to register names using the
country's new Arabic suffix. Websites had to end their addresses with ".com"
or another string using Latin characters. This means that Arab businesses and
government agencies still had to use Latin characters on billboards and
advertisements, even if they were targeting populations with no familiarity
with English.
Non-Latin characters were sometimes permitted for the
portions of the internet address before the suffix. But Arabic websites
generally haven't had that option because Arabic characters are written right
to left, conflicting with Latin suffixes written left to right. Egyptian Communication and Information Technology
Minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement that all this would open up new
horizons for e-services in Egypt.