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CNNIC Rejects 758,000 Applications
China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said November 28 that it has registered only 42,000 Web addresses in Chinese characters out of the 800,000 applications it received.
Web users should be able to begin using the new Chinese character Web addresses, or domain names, in December, said a representative for the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
CNNIC, the sole authority over domain name registration in China, rejected other applications because the requested names were already registered or else they failed to fill in the application form, the representative said.
VeriSign, a US company that has had a near monopoly on domain names in English, has also received hundreds of thousands of applications to register Web addresses in Chinese. Its Chinese-character addresses end in the extensions ".com," ".net" or ".org." CNNIC's are entirely in Chinese characters.
But the Chinese government has said only companies with permission from the Ministry of Information Industry can grant Chinese-language domain names, undermining VeriSign's plans to offer the same service.
Registering domain names has been a money maker for VeriSign. Sales of domain names and related services brought in more than half of its US$173.1 million revenue in its most recent quarter.
CNNIC, which also hands out domain names ending in ".cn," is giving the Chinese domain names free to applicants on a first-come, first-served basis.
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