Regional & local is the way to go – Information Technology Minister
At the IAMAI Summit held in delhi recently India’s Information Technology Minister Mr.Dayanidhi Maran said ‘If we look at the case of television in India, the real adoption and penetration came only when the content became local’ so taking a cue from TV Mr.Dayanidhi Maran expressed the need for local content development for internet and to facilitate the same he said ‘We will soon launch internationalised domain names (IDN) in the Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and others, enabling local language domain names at the secondary level.’
He also added that ‘BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd), MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd) and STPI (Software Technology Parks of India) are working together on hosting servers in the country. And this will be done within three to four months,’ Maran told reporters on the sidelines of the meet.’
According to me launching domain specific to languages could be the way to go to encourage local content but yet again to sutain such website the penetration for such languages would need to increase.
The internet recently passed its billionth user ventured online. Yet the idea that we all work and play on a common global internet is merely an illusion. In reality, the web is becoming ever more fragmented, and international borders are increasingly visible online. More and more web pages are appearing in languages other than English. China has more than 130 million internet users and is starting to play by its own rules. Soon to follow are the Middle East, India, Russia and Brazil.
What i am asking is that the technology that we thought was uniting us is it really dividing us? Well i guess at the end of day the web is a reflection of the society in someways so sooner or later borders that are offline would emerge online.
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I don't see this as dividing the virtual world, the whole idea here is more unification. Compare this with an indian housewife watching regional(hindi/national) soaps like Saas bahu, while sitting in USA/UK …. this is something similar, only much more accessible and with much more variety. But again, that's my perspective !