The .ASIA registry has announced that the IDN.Asia launch will begin in May 2011.  The initial launch of IDN.Asia will allow registrants to register .ASIA domains using in-language characters for Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese and Korean.

There will be a Sunrise Period for trademark holders. This will be followed by a Land Rush Period for registering premium names, and then a General Availability Period will begin. During the Sunrise and Land Rush periods domains that: (1) have been requested by two or more parties; and (2) have been verified, will be sent to a domain auction and awarded to the highest bidder. Domains requested by a single successful application will be allocated to the applicant, and no auction will be held.

.Asia IDN launch Timeline:

• Sunrise Application Period (70 days)

OPEN:  11 May 2011 (Wed, 12:00 UTC)

CLOSE:  20 July 2011 (Wed, 24:00 UTC)

•  Land Rush Application Period (70 days)

OPEN:  2 Aug 2011 (Tue, 12:00 UTC)

CLOSE:  11 Oct 2011 (Tue, 24:00 UTC)

If you would like to apply for a IDN.Asia or have any questions regarding the Sunrise Application process, please contact your Safenames account manager.

You may also contact the Safenames UK office at +44 1908 200022 and emeasales@safenames.net, or the Safenames US office at +1.703.574.5313 and nasales@safenames.net.

ICANN recently announced that the String Evaluations on proposed IDNs ccTLDs for Ukraine and Pakistan have passed.

Since the Fast Track Process was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea on 30 October 2009, a total of 25 countries/territories requests have successfully passed through the String Evaluation. Of these, 17 countries/territories (represented by 27 IDN ccTLDs) are delegated in the DNS root zone; with the remainder either readying to apply, or actively applying for, delegation of the string.

If you have any questions regarding IDN.IDN ccTLDs, please contact your Safenames account manager.

You may also contact the Safenames UK office at +44 1908 200022 and emeasales@safenames.net, or the Safenames US office at +1.703.574.5313 and nasales@safenames.net

.HK (Hong Kong) IDN.IDN launches Priority Registration Period for existing registrants of .HK domains

The registry for .HK domains names, recently announced that anyone who has registered the ASCII or English version of a .HK domain name, can now register the equivalent domain name in a Chinese .HK extension .香港 during the Pre-Launch Priority Registration (PLPR) period from 22 February to 10 March, 2011.

The full Chinese .香港 Internationalize Domain Name will make it easier for your customers and prospective clients to remember your Web address and the IDN.IDN removes language barriers. By using both the .HK and .香港, you can increase the marketing potential of your brand in Hong Kong and China.

If you have any questions regarding new IDN.IDN for .HK, please contact your Safenames account manager.

You may also contact the Safenames UK office at +44 1908 200022 and emeasales@safenames.net, or the Safenames US office at +1.703.574.5313 and nasales@safenames.net

The Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL), the .IL registry, will be making domain names that contain characters in Hebrew alphabet available for registration on Sunday 26^th December 12:00 GMT.  These domain names will be available to the general public with no local contact requirements through Safenames. The domain extension will remain “.il” for Israel and will still appear as ASCII.  However, the domain may contain non-ASCII characters. 

The General Availability Registration Period follows the recent completion of the early registration process.  During the Early Registration Period, registered companies, non-profit organizations, and Israeli trademark holders could reserve a Hebrew domain name in the company or organization’s official name or trademark.   Beginning on Sunday the 26th, any Hebrew domain name that has not already been taken may be registered on a first come, first served basis.  Please note that due to the holiday season the NIC has advised us that there may be a slight delay on the activation of any newly registered domains.

If you have any questions regarding general availability for IDN.CO.IL and IDN.NET.IL registrations, please contact your Safenames account manager.

You may also contact the Safenames UK office at +44 1908 200022 and emeasales@safenames.net, or the Safenames US office at +1.703.574.5313 and nasales@safenames.net.

The expansion of Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs among the country code registries continues.  It is now possible to register Cyrillic IDNs in the .COM.UA and .KIEV.UA domain extensions.  Domains may only contain Cyrillic symbols, digits (0-9) or a hyphen/dash (-). The domain name must include at least one Cyrillic symbol that is visually different from Latin symbols. 

The Ukrainian IDNs are in the land rush phase until 19 Dec 19 2010. Domain can be registered by anyone, however, registrations during this phase require a 10 year minimum term.

 On 21 December 2010, general registration begins and anyone can register IDN.COM.UA  or IDN.KIEV.UA with registration terms ranging from 1 year to 10 years.

After nearly six months since the initial announcement that Internationalized Domain Names (IDN.IDN) for country codes was approved by ICANN’s board, ICANN staff notified the Internet community and the world that the first non-Latin character domains can be registered representing the domain name and top-level extension in three countries. The first IDN country-code top-level domains were inserted in the DNS root zone last week allowing them to be used for live Web sites.

The initial launch includes three countries, and their respective IDN ccTLDs are:

Egypt: مصر (Egypt)

Saudi Arabia: السعودية (AlSaudiah)

United Arab Emirates: امارات (Emarat)

While Arabic has now become the first non-Latin script to be used as an IDN ccTLD, we expect this to be the first of many languages that will be available for IDN.IDN domains.  To date ICANN has received a total of 21 requests for IDN ccTLD(s) representing 11 different languages.  ICANN has stated that 13 requests have successfully passed through the “String Evaluation” (the second stage of the process) and are nearly ready for the requesting country or territory to initiate the request for TLD Delegation (the final stage of the application process).