Booking of Website Name in 9 Indian Languages to Open from Mar 16

The government from Monday will open booking of website names in nine Indian scripts including Sanskrit, Kashmiri, Kannada, Oriya, Sindhi and Malayalam.

The autonomous body National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) , under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, has invited applications under the sunrise period starting March 16 to book the entire website name in nine Indian scripts with Bharat as the top level domain which can also be written in the same scripts.

While this facility was already available for languages using Devanagari script, the booking has been opened for eight new languages. The other scripts are Assamese and Santhali in which the entire website name can be booked.

"The sunrise period will begin March 16 and ends on June 15. We will collect applications and check that there are no trademark or copyright issues. The allocation of dispute free domain will begin thereafter. Each domain applied during the sunrise period will have to be booked for a period of 5 years," a NIXI official, who did not wish to be named, told PTI.

The move to start website registration in regional languages is part of international internet body ICANN agenda to facilitate more people access internet by curbing language barrier.

"This makes India a global leader in the internationalized domain name space to have maximum IDNs in different languages. We are getting ready to launch email addresses in all the remaining languages. People with the Datamail app will be able to get email addresses in all 22 Indian languages," Ajay Data, Founder & CEO, Data Ingenious Global said. PTI PRS

Dot Bharat domain name to be launched on Aug.21

Last month we published news that Indian govt. is about to release Hindi domain names on or around India's Independence day this year. Finally the launch Hindi domain names has got official words and in order to facilitate multi-lingual Internet access all around the country, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who is the Minister of Communications and IT Minister, is all set to launch the dot Bharat domain in New Delhi on 21st August, 2014.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), which is an autonomous body, will reportedly enable the dot Bharat ccTLD.

Interestingly, the dot Bharat domain can be registered in Devnagari scripts such as Maithili, Nepali, Bodo, Marathi and Konkani.

The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has already cosigned the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) to National Internet Exchange of India in seven Indian languages.

NIXI and C-DAC are working very hard together and have also jointly formed a committee on International Domain Names (IDNs) in order to introduce domains in local languages such as Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi, and Gujrati.
The International Domain Names which will be introduced in Indian Languages are most likely to be represented in local language characters. These domain names can also carry characters or letters from Non-American Standard Code for Information Interchange scripts.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange or ASCII is a character encoding scheme which is based on the ordering of the English Alphabet.

The INRegistry has been made compulsory in the country for the process of registration, operation and management of International Domain Name in Indian languages.

In December 2013, the number of Internet subscribers in the country stood at 238.71 million, out of which Himachal Pradesh had the lowest number of Internet users with just 2.04 million subscribers. These facts and figures were recently given out by the Minister of Communication and IT Minister while informing the Lok Sabha.

The Government hopes that the domain names in the Indian languages will increase Internet penetration in the most remote areas of the country where the literacy rate is low. It further hopes that this would also accelerate local content delivery and other related services in these rural and remote areas of the country.

Govt. to launch Hindi Domain names on Independence day

In order to boost Internet access and governance in remote and rural areas of the country, the Department of Information Technology and Electronics has come up with Hindi language domain names. The domains will be launched on 15th August, on the eve of the country’s 67th Independence Day.

.Bharat written in Devanagari script will be launched on 15^th August 2014 and as a result of it the PMO website (pmindia.nic.in) can then be accessed using the Devanagari characters (Pradhanmantri.Bharat - www.प्रधानमंत्री.भारत).

The government has reserved Sarkar.Bharat and Shiksha.Bharat for itself and the educational institutions respectively. The government has also directed the Union Territories and states to register their respective names under the .Bharat domain name.

The policy framework which was required for the implementation of .Bharat country code top level domain has been completed beforehand in collaboration with various governmental agencies like the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and the National Internet Exchange of India.

Internet has now become a global resource and is instrumental in the socio-economic development of a country. Our very own Prime Minister had long ago realized the power of it and is an avid user of social media and Internet himself. Native languages also play a crucial role in a country like ours and government’s this initiative is surely going to help the half a billion Hindi speaking people in the country.

This initiative by the government is all set to benefit people who could not access the Internet using the English characters and have Hindi as their first language. The government has plans of launching this service in Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Gujrati and Punjabi in the near future.

The .IN Registery, which is a nodal agency of the National Internet Exchange of India, is even encouraging the various government departments, business organisations and public sector undertakings to adopt the .Bharat domain in order to increase their Internet engagement.

This initiative will help in bringing the people living in rural and remote areas of the country nearer to the centre and will help in bridging the digital divide that is prevalent right now.

Govt. to launch Hindi Domain names on Independence day

In order to boost Internet access and governance in remote and rural areas of the country, the Department of Information Technology and Electronics has come up with Hindi language domain names. The domains will be launched on 15th August, on the eve of the country’s 67th Independence Day.

.Bharat written in Devanagari script will be launched on 15^th August 2014 and as a result of it the PMO website (pmindia.nic.in) can then be accessed using the Devanagari characters (Pradhanmantri.Bharat - www.प्रधानमंत्री.भारत).

The government has reserved Sarkar.Bharat and Shiksha.Bharat for itself and the educational institutions respectively. The government has also directed the Union Territories and states to register their respective names under the .Bharat domain name.

The policy framework which was required for the implementation of .Bharat country code top level domain has been completed beforehand in collaboration with various governmental agencies like the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and the National Internet Exchange of India.

Internet has now become a global resource and is instrumental in the socio-economic development of a country. Our very own Prime Minister had long ago realized the power of it and is an avid user of social media and Internet himself. Native languages also play a crucial role in a country like ours and government’s this initiative is surely going to help the half a billion Hindi speaking people in the country.

This initiative by the government is all set to benefit people who could not access the Internet using the English characters and have Hindi as their first language. The government has plans of launching this service in Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Gujrati and Punjabi in the near future.

The .IN Registery, which is a nodal agency of the National Internet Exchange of India, is even encouraging the various government departments, business organisations and public sector undertakings to adopt the .Bharat domain in order to increase their Internet engagement.

This initiative will help in bringing the people living in rural and remote areas of the country nearer to the centre and will help in bridging the digital divide that is prevalent right now.