Kingdom Obtains Its Own Arabic Domain Name (.السعودية)

Media Center - Riyadh: Sunday 9/2/1431H

The Communications and Information Technology Commission announced that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia obtained, the day before yesterday, final approval to use the Arabic domain name representing the Kingdom on the Internet (.السعودية), through the fast-track process for registering internationalized country-code top-level domain names (IDN ccTLD), thus joining the first countries to obtain a domain name on the network in their national language, in addition to the United Arab Emirates, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and Russia.

In the coming days, Arabic domain names will be registered and officially used, so that they can be accessed from anywhere in the world, after completing all the requirements and procedures necessary to begin the registration process. Domain names in Arabic will become usable, such as the domain name: (يسر.السعودية) representing the website of the Yesser e-Government Program, and (تداول.السعودية) representing the website of the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

It is worth noting that the global organization ICANN, responsible for managing Internet number and name resources, opened the fast-track process for registering internationalized top-level domains to countries wishing to register a top-level domain in their local language on 16 November 2009.

The efforts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, represented by the Saudi Network Information Center at the Communications and Information Technology Commission, in addition to the Arab effort in this context, were of great importance in the adoption and use of Arabic domain names.