From http://www.idg.net/idgns/2001/02/27/VeriSignOpensDomainNamesTo70.shtml

VeriSign opens domain names to 70 languages

Laura Rohde, IDG News Service\London Bureau - February 27, 2001, 04:39

VeriSign Inc., the company in charge of maintaining the database of Internet domain names, announced Monday that it is now accepting domain name registrations in more than 65 additional languages.

Most of the languages are European, such as French, German and Spanish, as well as Eastern European languages including Armenian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Macedonian, and Russian, VeriSign said in a statement.

Last November, the Mountain View, California-based company introduced Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters to its service and has since registered over 800,000 names in the Asian languages, VeriSign said. [See "Multilingual Domain Name Testing to Begin," Nov. 9, 2000.]

VeriSign Global Registry Services (GRS), the unit of VeriSign that manages the back-end piece of the domain name registration process, began using its Multilingual Domain Names Testbed in November as a first step in finding ways to open the Internet to more users around the world.

For example, in late March, support in the testbed will be available for several Southeast Asian languages, including Lao, Thai and Tibetan. Furthermore, several Middle Eastern languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, will be available in late April, VeriSign said.

VeriSign, in Mountain View, California, can be reached at http://www.verisign.com/.