Communications and Information Technology Commission: The Raseel system achieves success in supporting Arabic on the internet

The Communications and Information Technology Commission explained that the "Raseel" system (مستخدم@رسيل.السعودية), in its latest release, achieved success in most tests - with high quality - during an international comparative trial conducted by a number of international experts on several global email systems that support addresses in different languages, during the session dedicated to the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), held on the sidelines of the 55th regular meeting of ICANN held in Marrakesh, Kingdom of Morocco, during the period March 5-10, 2016. With this, the Communications and Information Technology Commission achieved an international first in supporting the Arabic language in the global internet space, adding to Saudi Arabia's rich record in supporting Arabic domain names.

The Commission explained that the experimental "Raseel" system it developed is a proof of concept for the ability to develop and operate an Arabic email service, in addition to creating a platform and test environment to understand the requirements for providing email service with Arabic addresses and the challenges that may hinder that, and also includes researching the linguistic, technical, and regulatory aspects that contribute to the adoption and support of Arabic email addresses, with the possibility of using this system to test how other systems handle Arabic email.

The Commission noted that the "Raseel" system, in its latest release, is an experimental email service that supports the use of Arabic addresses and was developed locally by a national technical team affiliated with the Saudi Network Information Center at the Communications and Information Technology Commission to comply with the latest international specifications and standards for Email Address Internationalization (EAI), using open-source software developed locally to support the Arabic language.