Canada's Internet goes bilingual

01-02-2013

Victoria Carrington

2013 has started with good news for Canadian Internet users, businesses and trademark/domain name owners who do business here.

2013 has started with good news for Canadian Internet users, businesses and trademark/domain name owners who do business here.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) announced in early January that the .ca registry now supports the use of the full range of French characters in .ca domain names. Until now, .ca domain names were restricted to the letters a to z, the numbers 0 to 9 and hyphens, leaving Francophone Internet users with no choice but to register French words without the benefit of the accented letters or ligatures é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, oe, ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, and ÿ.

The advantages of being able to register domain names that correspond exactly to trademarks and business names in both of Canada’s official languages are clear, but the technical and policy challenges caused by the use of accented letters are not as readily apparent.


Internet, Canada, languages, ccTLDs, CIRA

WIPR