JEDDAH, Sep 27(Arab News): Saudi Network Information Center (SaudiNIC) will begin registering Arabic domain names on Sept. 27, the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) announced on Saturday.

“The registration will be open for any entity or individual on a first-come-first-served basis,” said the CITC, the Kingdom’s telecom regulator. “The rush will start at 10 a.m. on Monday,” it said. Applications should be presented through the website www.nic.net.sa.

Arabic domain names is the equivalent of other domain names but written in Arabic characters and intended to be used in exactly the same way regular domain names are used, specially in Web browsing.

“Arabic domain names fall into a bigger category of domain names called IDN which stands for Internationalized Domain Names,” said the CITC. IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that contain one or more characters other than the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet.

Sultan Al-Malik, spokesman of the CITC, said the Arabic domain names would increase the use of the Internet by Saudis. SaudiNIC is a nonprofit entity in charge of administering the domain name space under (.sa).

Arabic domain names are unique. Unlike their English equivalent, users can easily spell the Arabic domain name without any problems since Arabic does not have the spelling problems common in English. Due to the expected huge demand for Arabic domain and the significant need to maintain the entities’ rights in keeping their names, the registration process has been divided into two main phases — the first one dedicated to entities and trade marks’ owners while the second for all applicants.

The qualified registrants in the first phase are any entity or individual who has a registered trade name or mark with the Saudi Ministry of Commerce and Industry, including all governmental or semi-governmental authorities and organizations.

Qualified registrants are given the opportunity to register Arabic domain names that correspond to their Arabic official or commercial names as they appear in the commercial registrations, trademark registration certificates, or the official name in case of governmental entities (without alternation, abbreviation, or translation) without any changes, the SaudiNIC said.

A typical .sa domain name consists of two or three parts separated by (.) and looks like .sa or ..sa

The portion can contain any combination of letters (a-z) and numbers (0-9) as well as hyphen (-) between 2 and 63 characters long.

“The domain name will be registered for the first entity that submits a complete and valid request. If another entity claims the same name, it can submit an objection through the proper objection procedure,” the regulator said. A domain can be registered within one to three days. Those interested can obtain more information about the registration procedures from the website.