Dot com or dot in

 
Published: Friday 15 October 2004

Union Ministry of Communications, India

The Union minister of communications Dayanidhi Maran has elaborate plans to increase Internet usage in India. And if he has his way, many Indian netizens -- individual or corporates -- might soon have the suffix dot in (.in) after their address. In the second week of September, the minister held extensive discussions with Paul Twomey, the chief executive officer, Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers -- the us-based non-profit organisation that allocates internet protocol addresses. On the anvil is a plan for a programme -- by the end of this year -- to enable Indian companies makes the switch over. According to Twomey, "many European companies looking for business in India tend to type the country code. But since most Indian companies do not have a dot in address there is a good chance that they lose business." Currently about 4000 Indian companies have a dot in address. That compares very poorly with international leaders in Internet usage. For example, dot de in Germany has around 60 lakh users, Japan's dot jp has 44 lakh users, while dot au (Australia) has 24 lakh users. However, many Indian companies themselves might not be too keen to shift to a dot. in. Says Kiran Karnik, chairperson, National Association of Software and Service Companies, "Those with a dot.com address might find it unfeasible to shift over."

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