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Saturday, February 16. 2008
The ICANN meeting held in the Indian Capital city of New Delhi has been an eye-opener for me as far as .ASIA is concerned. Seen from Europe, .ASIA has mainly been a protection exercise for western companies that are active in Asia. Especially during the domain's Sunrise phase which, by definition, is only open to prior rights holders and therefore is heavily biased towards commercial entities such as companies.
But the conversations I've had in India have made me re-evaluate that assumption. Registrars and domain professionals here are already sensing strong demand for .ASIA, and not just from companies. Individuals are interested in the domain as well and more surprisingly, they actually know it's coming!
This is surprising to me because in Europe, I don't think the general public generally knows about an imminent new domain launch until it's already happened. I suppose I really shouldn't be that surprised that there are a large number of domain-savvy people in India. The country is an IT powerhouse after all. But it certainly makes me wish our own media would take a leaf out of India's book and concentrate on new Internet developments a lot more.
DotAsia is doing its very best to promote its domain and held a press conference during the ICANN meeting week to push .ASIA to the local press. Edmon Chung, DotAsia's CEO, first explained about the domain name system and the way .ASIA fits into that (the press conference was for the general media – much more useful for the domain industry than gathering a few specialists and preaching, if not necessarily to the converted, at least to people who've already heard the message before).
He then introduced a few local stars – sports, TV and cinema personalities - who have already signed on to secure their own .ASIA domain.
The idea is to put .ASIA in the region's general psyche by taking it out of that nerdy domain expert closet and pushing it mainstream. And it seems to be working. While the man on the street in India has no interest in anything outside of .IN or .COM, and certainly not in any of the European domains, he wants his .ASIA! In fact, I actually felt some degree of pride towards .ASIA during my stay in New Delhi, with people telling me that "at last, we've got our own .COM"...
Obviously, we're not talking all of India's population here. Compared to India's main priorities (dealing with poverty for one), domain names just seem trivial. But the nation's computer expertise is bringing it economic potential and power, and that definitely means something to the man on the street.
So while I'm not making any concrete predictions, I wouldn't be surprised if .ASIA explodes in India and some of the region's other countries when it becomes available to all on March 26, 2008.
