The National University of Singapore has incorporated a spin-off company, i-dns.com International ("the company"), to provide a service which enables users to register Internet domain names in various languages. Presently, domain names are only registrable using the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Professor Hang Chang Chieh, the University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, said that the objective of introducing of multi-lingual domain name registration was to "unleash the potential of e-commerce to the non-English speaking countries".
The new system will make registration of domain names in other languages such as Chinese, Korean, Thai, Yiddish, Tamil and Hindu possible. This would enable the world’s non-English speaking population to access the Internet – (estimated at 68% of the world population).
