Web aims to standardise alphabets

July 2004

A meeting is being held in Malaysia aimed at helping web users who do not use the Western alphabet.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which oversees the system of web addresses and domain names says Asians will make up most of the net's users within a few years.

While Western letters are largely standardized, those used in some alphabets vary from country to country. This causes problems when typing web addresses, which need to be precise.

Although the internet was developed in English-speaking countries, the net's centre of gravity is moving East. Icann says that more than 100 million people around the world have high-speed broadband connections to the net, and that nearly half of them are in Asia.

The company believes that within years most internet users will live there, and they predict it will have a huge economic impact on the region.