TLD Registry Ltd. company concluded registry agreement with ICANN for two new top-level domain in Chinese language: .在线 и .中文网. The agreements have already been signed but as it is expected that will be announced today while an official visit of Jyrki Tapani Katainen, Finland Prime-Minister, to Beijing.
TLD Registry Ltd. is registered in Ireland but is mostly financed by Finnish investors. Among them there is Vision+ Investment Fund, one of the key participants of which is Nokia company. Support for TLD Registry Ltd. is also provided by Rovio Entertainment company (the creator of a famous game Angry Birds).
As the Head of TLD Registry Ltd., Arto Isokoski, told Domain Incite portal, 在线 and 中文网 are very wide-spread and often used phrases in Chinese Internet. The first one of them is the direct translation for “online”, the second one means “website in Chinese”. “We are surprised that we’ve been the only applicant for the correspondent domains”, - Mr Isokoski mentioned.
It’s supposed that ICANN can delegate .在线 and .中文网 domains in February. In this case TLD Registry Ltd. is planning to bring them to the market in the beginning of the next year. Users will have access to the registration of the correspondent second-level domains all around the world.
