Internet penetration in the Middle East tripled in the past eight years, from 20 per cent in 2009 to 60 per cent this year as a result of the introduction of Arabic domain names, reports Gulf News. "Earlier, Arabic names were used as internet addresses, but they were in the English alphabets because non-Latin characters had limited use at the second, third or even fourth level. The new Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) web addresses with the generic top-level domain (gTLD) introduced in 2010 enabled the users to register and use domain names based on their local language scripts. These included users of language based on right-to left script such as Arabic and users of languages based on non-alphabetic scripts such as Mandarin Chinese. ... [ICANN estimates] one billion more people, mostly from rural areas across the globe, will access internet in the next eight years, using their local languages in non-Latin scripts."
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