Japan, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 11 May 2000 -- California-based company, i-DNS.net International, launched their Japanese domain name registration services this month. By using technology developed by this company, Internet address can now be written in Japanese, even though we have taken for granted that English is standard language for addresses in the Internet environment, such as domain names or homepage address. For example, you now only need to key in rather than "nihonshinbun.com." Companies can also register domain names using the names of companies and products. This is useful for advertising purposes. To consumers, this technology allows them to use the Internet more easily and will lead to the expanded potential of e-commerce and related businesses.

The company plans to jointly found a Japanese subsidiary with ASCII, Crayfish, and InterQ - all who are currently offering English domain name registration services in Japan. Japanese domain names that fall within the three categories of Top Level Domains -- will be sold through partners. Registration cost of one domain name is about USD95 (one thousand yen) for two years. The company aims to register approximately 100,000 domain names within the next twelve months. Although there are domain name services that provide a mixture of Japanese and English in a single domain, there are no other services that can offer domain names using only Japanese characters like this.

Users can write domain names in Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Consumers can quickly reach and access desirable web pages and use search engines without typing alphabet addresses. To access this service, special freeware provided by the company -- either through their web page or through CD-ROMs attached in PC magazines -- should be installed in your PC.

i-DNS.net offers Internet technology that was developed by the National University of Singapore. The company was founded last November with funds from a venture capital company. It aims at creating an environment where non-English domain names worldwide can be widely used; the company has started registrations in China, Thailand, and India. The total number of domain names registered to date has reached 100,000.

For companies, the number of domain names that are essential to launch e-commerce will be about 20 million worldwide. The registration and management of domain names has been opened since last year after the liberalization of registry monopoly by Network Solutions Inc (NSI) in the US. Domain names with <.com>, <.net>, and <.org> to be used in Japan were said to be reached 200,000.

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