Vernacular domain names on the cards

Minister for Communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran today said the government is exploring the idea of providing domain names in local languages.

"We, in the Department of Information Technolgy (DIT), are in talks with ICANN for the provision of domain names in local languages," Maran told reporters here while announcing the new policy for registration of '.in' (dot in) Internet domain names.

Under the new policy, the .in domain names can be registered online from January 1, 2005. Subscribers have to pay Rs 250 and Rs 750 per year for registration of third(.co.in or, .net.in) and second (.in) levels of domain names respectively. The total process will be completed within 24 hours of the receipt of application form.

"This sort of new domain names will reduce the cost of Internet as the subscriber will not use international bandwidth, which he otherwise uses with .com or .net domain names," Maran said.

This new domain names would give an identity and generate more Internet traffic within the country, which could result in increased Internet speed and reduced tariffs for subscribers, he added.

The, .in registry will announce a sunrise period of 90 days to enable registered trademark owners, registered companies and owners of intellectual property to secure registration of their domain names and protect their brands.

National Internet Exchange of India (Nixi), which is a not-for-profit company promoted by the DIT and the Internet Service Providers Association of India (Ispai), will appoint registrars across the country for registering these domain names.

"Nixi aims to ensure the Internet traffic, which originates within India and also has destinations in India, remains within the country," Maran said.

Under the current practice, the traffic is unnecessarily taken to overseas servers in the host country, mostly to the US. The government will create a .in Network Information Centre (Innic) which will work jointly with Nixi to operate this domain name service.

The government is also considering to set up a second tier of NIXI hubs in a few provincial capitals to address the problem of excessive cost of connectivity for smaller internet service providers.