July 18, 2011
Domain Name Problems in South Sudan
In February 2011, southern Sudan voted in favor of breaking off from Sudan and creating their own independent nation. At 99 percent in favor of splitting Africa’s largest country, the voting was practically unanoymous. The date the Republic of South Sudan will be welcomed into the world is July 9th, 2011.
When the country is born, a number of practical issues will immediately plague the new antion. For instance, currency, passports, stamps and diplomatic relations not to mention a new infrastructure must all be considered. Another issue that is looming on the horizon is that of domain names.
All countries in the 21st century must have a country code top-level domain (ccTLD). Sudan currently uses .sd so the Republic of South Sudan must find their domain name extension. Countries must select any two letters in their name. The Soviet Unino has .su so the most obvious is .ss which is what South Sudan would like to select.
Unfortunately it is unlikely the Internation Organization for Standardization (ISO) will allocate that extension to the nation due its negative connotations elsewhere in the world.
“SS” has a strong association in Europe with the Nazi’s during World War II. Regardless, South Sudan has applied for the extension.
If turned down, the country will be in quite the predicament. Even if South Sudan is creative and selects .rs, it is taken by Servia and .sn has been acquired by Senegal. All feasible letter combinations have already been selected by other countries.
English and Arabic are presently the two official languages of the Sudan. Therefore, it may be acceptable to use a non-Latin script ccTLD that is in Arabic. This is slowly becoming a popular practice with regards to domain name extensions. However, since English is the lingua franca of the Internet, it appears as if the world’s newest nation has an additional dilemma on their hands.
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