Within a month of the approval, by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to the proposal that allows Web addresses in non-Roman characters, Egypt has taken the lead in applying a domain name in the Arabic script.

As per a report published by TGDaily. com, yhe Arabic Internet domain name that Egypt has applied for comprises a suffix that corresponds to 'masr' - which means Egypt in Arabic - in the ASCII character set.

On Monday, ICANN, an agency overseeing Web naming and numbering systems, launched the IDN (Internet Domain Name) ccTLD Fast Track Process. It has invited countries, or their designees, to propose internationalized domain names in non-Latin characters, including Chinese, Arabic, Hindi and Korean. The first international domain names will likely mark their first appearance next year.

The ICANN approval of Web addresses in non-Latin languages is largely being seen as a doorway to the expansion of the Web - whereby the Internet will be easily accessible by the billions of people who speak languages other than English.

In a recent statement, the ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom said: "The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online -- people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives."