HONG KONG, November 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Priority for Existing ".Asia" Domain Registrants for Corresponding IDNs 
Considered

Following announcements by ICANN to approve the use of Internationalized
Domain Names (IDN), the global top-level domain ".Asia", will accept IDN
registrations starting in the second half of 2010 to address pent up demand
in Asia for multilingual web addresses.

(Logo: http://www.prnasia.com/xprn/sa/200808151139.jpg )

"Asia is one of the most important regions for IDN. Asia is already the 
largest Internet marketplace with over 700 million users online, but that 
represents only 18.5% penetration. IDN will help bring the Internet to the 
rest of the people in Asia," said Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia. "Small Medium 
Enterprises around the world will benefit from IDN. Local SMEs in Asia can 
leverage their own brand in their own language to build an online presence 
with IDN, while global SMEs can become more Asian-friendly by adopting an 
Asian IDN as their address."

Today about 180 million domains are registered, representing an 
estimated US$10 billion annual market, including secondary market and value 
added services. The deployment of IDN can dramatically expand the domain 
market in Asia, as users and businesses recognize the investment value of 
domains.

DotAsia will release draft IDN launch policies in December 2009 and
invite industry experts and users to provide input in an open process.
Policies will be finalized in March 2010. Policies in development include
Sunrise and Landrush provisions. Offering existing registrants priority to
register their corresponding IDN domain, especially for Romanized names, will
be considered. Further info: http://www.idn.asia.

DotAsia is the first generic top-level-domain (gTLD) to include IDN TLD
in its application to ICANN. "Being an inventor of IDN technology, and having
served on many technology and policy committees, it is exciting to see IDN
happen after over 10 years of hardwork by the community," added Chung.
"DotAsia and its members are pioneers of IDN, and are among the first to
offer full IDN experiences to users in Asia."

DotAsia Organisation ( http://www.registry.asia ) is a not-for-profit
corporation promoting Internet development and adoption in Asia. The
organization oversees the ".Asia" top-level Internet domain, and is an open
consortium of top-level-domain authorities around the region: ".CN" (China),
".JP" (Japan), ".KR" (Korea), ".IN" (India), etc., and regional Internet
organizations: APNIC, APNG, APCERT, etc. DotAsia aspires to embrace the Asia
Century to become a nucleus for Internet development.

Contact:
 
     Ping Wong
     Tel:  +852-3165-1496
     idn@registry.asia