The regulatory body ICANN has approved plans to let web addresses be written in non-Latin characters in a move that it calls the "biggest technical change" to how the internet works since its invention four decades ago, which seems to be massively over-stating the case.The proposal means domain names can be written in Chinese as well as Greek, Arabic, Hindi or Cyrillic and be understood natively by the servers that connect computers together over the web.
Currently, domain names can only be displayed using the Latin alphabet letters A-Z, the digits 0-9 and the hyphen, but in the future countries will be able to display country-code Top Level Domains (cc TLDs) in their native language.
Welsh is excluded because it can be spelled using Latin characters although Rh, ch, ll and so on are letters in their own right. So, yes, there is a http://llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com/ (the longest URL on the internet, although, sadly, Gorsafawddachaidraigodanheddogleddollonpenrhynareurdraethceredigion does not have its own URL.
The first of the new the first IDN-compliant addresses should be in operation by the middle of next year, said current ICANN President Rod Beckstrom, who is seen in our illustration. Note that he has just resigned this post for reasons unspecified. As this is written, no replacement has been announced.
The Washington Post according to the outlined proposal, ICANN will charge registries of $26,000 for an evaluation processing fee, which can be paid in the local currency. ICANN would also like an annual contribution fee of 3% of a registry’s revenue, which can be as low as 1% for low-volume registries.