The IDSC is the body that governs the use of domain names (web addresses) ending with .eg (Egypt). With the adoption of the Internationalized Domain Name System (i-DNS) pioneered by i-DNS.net, Egypt will become the first country in the Middle East to endorse and implement country-level domain names in a local language. This means that anyone who wishes to set up a .eg domain name can now do so in Arabic. This offers websites that currently have English domain names to also have a corresponding one in Arabic, or any other local language. It is envisioned that i-DNS technology will greatly facilitate the opening of global e-commerce markets by supporting the presence of Arabic as an international language in the Internet.
"With this agreement, Egypt will be the first country in the Middle East to endorse the use of Arabic web addresses," said Wael Nasr, i-DNS.net Director of Business Development for the Middle East. "This presents an enormous opportunity for businesses to expand their presence on the Internet, as well as facilitate communications within the Arab world, and with those that are interested in the Arabic culture and language."
"i-DNS technology fully supports the Arabic language because it is able to process the right-to-left text input functionality that is familiar to all of us," said Dr Rafaat Radwan, Head of IDSC. "With the option to use English and Arabic, anyone and everyone will be able to draw from the incredible storehouse of knowledge and information that exists in the Internet. These innovations will definitely make web browsing much easier and contribute to the growth of Internet users here."
Previously, web addresses could only be rendered in Roman or English characters. i-DNS technology gives companies and individuals the power to register and use web addresses in their local languages. Based on Unicode, it currently supports 55 languages and their local encoding, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Thai and Tamil. It is fully compatible with all commonly used browsers and inter-operable with the current Domain Name System.
"i-DNS.net is committed towards the vision of a truly global Internet where anyone, anywhere can participate online on equal terms," said Michael Ng, Chief Executive Officer of i-DNS.net. "We are pleased to be working hand-in-hand with the IDSC to encourage the use of the Internet in Egypt and the Middle East."
Currently, users are already able to register web addresses ending in <.com>, <.net> and <.org>) in Arabic, following i-DNS' commercial partnerships with Internet Egypt and Link-Egypt in May.
The service for domain names ending with 
is expected to be available in the last quarter of 2000.
About The Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC)
The Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) was initiated as a center to support the Egyptian Cabinet's decision-making process, particularly that which involved socioeconomic development, acting as well as a catalyst for building Egypt's information infrastructure. Ever since its initiation in 1985, IDSC has been working on the process of building up Egypt's Information Technology (IT) industry and decision support infrastructure, in addition to developing a base for the nation's software and hi-tech industries.
The Center evolved around Egypt's dedicated efforts towards joining the international IT revolution, and institutionalizing the decision making process through access to information. IDSC was also established with the long-run vision of providing information access to the public at large particularly businesspeople and investors.
Over the past decade or more, the Center has successfully achieved its basic goals of setting up an information core for the decision making process of the Egyptian Cabinet, and has also in the process created channels for the flow of information both locally and internationally.
For more information, please visit http://www.idsc.gov.eg/
