After twenty years of English as the only language, as of next year Arab domain names will become available. With domains such as .emarat becoming available, this will be the start of a new dimension for the UAE.

Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), said in an exclusive interview with Gulf News at Gitex that organisations in the UAE can now request a personal generic top level domains (gTLDs) in Arabic as well.

As of January, it is thought that, major organisations such as government agencies can begin the application process to Icann to change .com or .net suffixes for either .emaar or .tra.

The application process will begin in January 2012 to continue to April 12.

‘If you have a community based application, you will get a higher priority,’ Beckstrom said of the application process. ‘Our policy development process favours communities.’

Applicants will not be known until the process begins in January, but it’s been predicted that this will mainly attract large businesses.

Forecasters have predicted as many as 4,000 applications maybe put forward.

Following an application being submitted, the Icann board will then have to approve the domain and the process will be expensive. Every single applicant will have to pay an ‘evaluation fee of $185,000’.

And once an application has been approved there will also be an annual charge of $25,000 – paid to Icann to keep and maintain the domain.