The launch of Chinese, Japanese and Korean ".asia" Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) will help enterprises with brand establishment and enhancement and make the Internet more accessible, said Edmond Chung, CEO of DotAsia, in an exclusive interview with China Daily Website.

For international brands, the ".asia" IDN will expand the exposure of their Asia region branches and strengthen intellectual property rights protection, and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) around the world will benefit from the IDN deployment, Chung said.

"Local SMEs in Asia can leverage their existing brand in their native language to build their online presence with an IDN, while global SMEs can become more Asian-friendly by adopting an Asian IDN as their web address."

A ".asia" domain improves the search engine optimization (SEO) ranking for users looking for Asian information as well as the hundreds of millions of users searching from Asia.

"Businesses are known in their native languages and the development of English domain names has reached its utmost point. Promoting domain names in native languages will make Internet easier to access for people in less developed regions," said Ching Chiao, vice president of DotAsia.

The number of Internet users in China has continued to increase. Currently only about one third of the Chinese population can access the Internet, so there is a large space for growth, said Chiao.

"The most important growing point is in the second and third-tier cities and the countryside. Chinese ".asia" IDN will help the popularization of Internet access in rural areas and promote the Internet development in China."

In order to avoid irrational speculation and disorder, DotAsia, the registration agency that oversees the ".asia" top-level Internet domain name, specially designed "Sunrise" and "Landrush" phases in ".asia" domain name registrations.

The Sunrise phase accommodates registrants with "prior rights" to names to register IND ".asia" domains with priority. Theses include governments, trademark holders and registered businesses.

For Landrush, which comes in the wake of Sunrise, if only one application is received for an IDN, the IDN will be allocated to the applicant. If more than one successful application is received for the same IDN, an auction will be held between the applicants at the base price of $10.

"The auction method is used to ensure the stability of the opening of the registration," Chung said. "Before us, the opening of each top level domains brought chaos and invited a lot of lawsuits and disputes. The result shows that our method is successful. Only people who really want the domain name will get it and use it."

In the Sunrise phase of Chinese, Japanese and Korean ".asia" IDN applications, DotAsia received 50 percent of applications from China, 25 percent from Korea and 25 percent from Japan.

".asia" is the first new top-level domain with Asia as the base area compared with old top-level domains such as ".com" or ".cn".

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the relaxation of the rules for the introduction of new top-level domains and will receive applications next year. The decision will allow companies to register their brands as generic top-level domain names.

"If all new top-level domains are all owned by US and European companies, it will undoubtedly impact the development of Internet development in the Asian region. So we are pushing Asian organizations and companies to consider applying for new top level domains. No matter in brands or in industries," Chung said.

As a regional not-for-profit organization promoting Internet development and adoption around Asia, DotAsia has been committed to community work in Asia since the organization became profitable in 2008.

DotAsia launched the One Laptop Per Child project to bridge the digital divide. The organization also supports the Information Society Innovation Fund (ISIF) which is aimed at stimulating creative solutions for information communication technology development needs in the Asia Pacific region. DotAsia also organized the NetMission Ambassadors program bringing together network of young volunteers devoted towards promoting and contributing towards digital inclusion, and Internet governance.