The Melbourne-based company said it plans to extend its registry business into other character-based languages, including Japanese, Arabic, Thai and Tamil. Melbourne IT will eventually register domain names in European languages, including Cyrillic, the Russian script. The present system used worldwide only allows domain names to be registered in Roman characters. "When you consider non-English speaking countries are forced to use English, it's a little bit cheeky," said Clive Flory, general manager of Internet Names WorldWide, the registry business of Melbourne IT, in an interview.
Melbourne IT, which is 14.45 per cent owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, has a monopoly on the sale of com.au addresses in Australia and also sells .com, .org and .net Internet names.
The process used to value Melbourne IT before its initial share sale on Dec 14 was recently questioned by the government of Victoria, Australia's second-most populous state. Auditor-General Wayne Cameron said the company was offered at "hundreds of millions of dollars below its market value". At that sale, 42.5 million shares were sold for A$2.20 each.
Shares in Melbourne IT rose 2.25 per cent, or 20 Australian cents, to A$9.10. -- Bloomberg
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