Internet addresses set for shake-up

The internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval of international domain names - or addresses - that can be written in non-Latin script.

There are something like 50 different alphabets in the world. But if you want to type in a web address on your computer, there's only one you can use.

It is the Latin alphabet. Broadly speaking that's great for people in the western world. But not so good if you live in most of Asia and haven't been trained in a western language.

This week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which is the non-profit group that oversees domain names, is holding a meeting in Seoul.

One of the key issues to be taken up is whether to allow for the first time entire internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.

That could potentially open up the Web to more people around the world as addresses could be in alphabets such as Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic.

First broadcast on World Business News