ICANN approves '.asia' as top-level domain
Businesses in the Asia-Pacific region will have the domain as an
alternative to country domains such as ".jp."
By Candace Lombardi
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: December 8, 2006, 2:08 PM PST
http://news.com.com/2110-1028_3-6142240.html
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers signed off on the
.Asia Registry Agreement on Wednesday at its annual meeting in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, meaning that businesses in the Asia-Pacific region will soon have
the option of registering an ".asia" domain. The top-level domain will be
overseen by the DotAsia Organization. The ".asia" domain will be used as a
supplement to country domains like ".jp" for Japan and ".cn" for China.
ICANN is a California-based organization that keeps tabs on the technical
side of the Internet, including guiding traffic to gTLDs (generic
Top-Level Domains) ike ".com". Because of the way the Internet evolved,
the U.S. Department of Commerce has ultimate control over ICANN, a point
of contention with other countries. DotAsia, according to an ICANN
statement, is the first gTLD registry to be headquartered in the
Asia-Pacific region.