IDNs high priority for India....says ICANN CEO

[Billidn]

World will change ICANN's future, CEO says

QUOTE FROM ARTICLE
Q: When can we expect to have international top-level domain names in different languages?

A: I'm thinking first quarter of next year. There's a series of countries - the northeast Asians, the Arabs, the Indians, the Arabic-speaking Farsi, south Asia if you like, and then the Bulgarians and the Greeks and the Russians - have all expressed interest in fast-tracking this process. And this has got very high attention.

In Russia, it is an agenda item for both the president and the prime minister. Similarly, we've had lots of good conversations with the Chinese - it's going to the top of ministries and to state councils.

It's also a very high priority for India. The Indians are putting fiber into 600,000 villages across India. Around 150 million people in India speak English. The next billion don't.

So the policy is to bring the Internet to the next 300 to 400 million people in India. To do that they have to have a keyboard that's in the character set of the village. There are 22 official languages and 11 scripts. END QUOTE

 

[.tv]

It's also a very high priority for India. The Indians are putting fiber into 600,000 villages across India. Around 150 million people in India speak English. The next billion don't.

So the policy is to bring the Internet to the next 300 to 400 million people in India. To do that they have to have a keyboard that's in the character set of the village. There are 22 official languages and 11 scripts.

This has been debated over here many times.

In India, the things are entirely different from Japanese, Chinese or other uni-language speakers/writers.

Don't think that I'm against IDNs, as I own a few hundred, but not Indian IDNs.

Here in India, if a person doesn't know English, he knows nothing about computers and most probably he is an illiterate, period. :zzz:

 

[Billidn]

This has been debated over here many times.
Here in India, if a person doesn't know English, he knows nothing about computers and most probably he is an illiterate, period. :zzz:

You don't see companies branding and advertising with keywords in Hindi?

संगीत.com Seems a domain advertised like that would be eyecatching and grab my attention even if I spoke both Hindi and English.

Using only English seemingly eliminates a good part of your market. For me having both the ASCII and IDN versions would be the best of both worlds.

 

[.tv]

You don't see companies branding and advertising with keywords in Hindi?

संगीत.com Seems a domain advertised like that would be eyecatching and grab my attention even if I spoke both Hindi and English.

Using only English seemingly eliminates a good part of your market. For me having both the ASCII and IDN versions would be the best of both worlds.

You basically miss the important point. If a person knows how to write in Hindi is a literate, and he prefers English to browse the Net. A person who speaks ONLY Hindi, most probably doesn't know even how to write in Hindi. The billion+ population you referred consists of majority of illiterates, who speak Hindi and a few other languages. They do not know how to write. Writing and Speaking is entirely different.

One of my previous posts about Indian IDNs:

Unlike other country IDNs, Indian IDNs are not worthwhile to hold on to them.

Reasons:

1. Unlike Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean IDNs, 99.9% of internet users at India DON'T use local languages while surfing the Internet.

2. They do not have localized keyboards, or even do not know how to type in their local language! This is the main disadvantage for Indian IDN investors.

3. Consider Japanese and Chinese. They use their local language (which is their primary language and the only one) for most of their daily activities, which includes surfing the Internet. In India there are about 320 languages. According to the census of 2001, 29 'languages' have more than a million native speakers, 60 have more than 100,000, 122 have more than 10,000 native speakers and rest of them have less than 10,000 native speakers.

Moreover, the Constitution of India recognises 22 official languages, spoken in different parts the country, namely:

1. Assamese
2. Bengali
3. Bodo
4. Dogri
5. Gujarati
6. Hindi
7. Kannada
8. Kashmiri
9. Konkani
10. Maithili
11. Malayalam
12. Manipuri
13. Marathi
14. Nepali
15. Oriya
16. Punjabi
17. Sanskrit
18. Santhali
19. Sindhi
20. Tamil
21. Telugu
22. Urdu

4. Every language has almost no influence in other states where another language has majority. So it is practically NOT possible to popularize a particular language IDN throughout India among different ethnic group.

5. In most part of India, even people who regularly use the computers still unaware of what a domain name is.

6. Typing Indian languages are pain in the ass. To type a less complicated single character in Tamil, a person has to use at least 3 key pressings. A highly complicated single character requires pressing at least 5 keys. If a domain name has a 6 to 7 complicated characters then imagine the number of key pressings required to enter the actual domain name! :bah:

7. Illiteracy has a major impact. About 45% of total Hindi speakers are illiterates!

In terms of the size of illiteracy, eight States, viz. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Maharastra had more than 15 million illiterates each and accounted for 69.7 per cent of the illiterate population of the country.

The first four of these states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are in Hindi belt and have 42.76% illiterates.

Number of non-literates in these States - Uttar Pradesh (58.85 million), Bihar (35.08 million), Rajasthan (18.15 million) and Madhya Pradesh (17.97 million).

In Bihar the number of illiterates increased from 31.98 million in 1991 to 35.08 million in 2001.

Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have 10.21 million and 6.10 million illiterates in 2001.

It means that 48.12% of the non-literates reside in these six Hindi-speaking States.

Other States having more than 10 million illiterates are: Orissa (11.61 million), Gujarat (13.31 million) and Tamil Nadu (14.65 million).

If these points are not a problem at all for your Indian IDN adventure, then go ahead!

I wish you all the best. :santa:

I tired of debating this again and again... Good luck with your Indian IDNs.

 

[ClydeUS]

How many illiterate people in the USA are on the net daily?

The answer to that of course is absolutely 10's of millions! and is just in the USA[of course its also fact in other countries also],and yes i am american and i know this because its fact and even my own family have not been to college 1 day and being from Alabama are concidered uneducated by most of the northern USA. and note this we have a local dialect that never changes called redneck country speaking..lol...which will never ever change.

the next billion indians will type in their local language if they have a choice.if being uneducated means you can at least surf the internet,you need to check how the facts of how many americans did not even finish high school and still drive mass million traffic on the internet!

this is my own opinion,but i think it's very valid.

CT

 

[lipps]

The answer to that of course is absolutely 10's of millions! and is just in the USA[of course its also fact in other countries also],and yes i am american and i know this because its fact and even my own family have not been to college 1 day and being from Alabama are concidered uneducated by most of the northern USA. and note this we have a local dialect that never changes called redneck country speaking..lol...which will never ever change.

the next billion indians will type in their local language if they have a choice.if being uneducated means you can at least surf the internet,you need to check how the facts of how many americans did not even finish high school and still drive mass million traffic on the internet!

this is my own opinion,but i think it's very valid.

CT

One has to also factor in the poverty element in India.