Following .EU for Europe and .ASIA for Asia, .LAT could be in by the end of 2008 standing for South American and Caribbean communities. This scoop was the main topic of interviewes given on telephone by Oscar Robles Garay and Oscar Messano.

Regional gTLDs are tools for Internet user to claim their sense of geographical belonging as .CAT is the show off for the membership of Catalan linguistic cultural community.

The DotLAT is aiming South American and Caribbean communities as a whole all over the world said Anthony Harris interviewed on this topic during ICANN meeting in Sao Paulo. “Continents must have their identity on Internet. South America was missing. Dot Lat is open as there is no sponsor. Our idea is that big South American or Caribbean communities leaving in US for example could have an interest to be connected with .LAT either for commercial or professionnal reasons, or for personnal leaning.

Tony Harris, chief executive for CABASE has been working on this project for 4 years now with the goal to become equivalent to what .EU means for Europe or .ASIA means for Asia.

If someone is developping a region with the sense of identity, for trade, to have people working, or for cultural reasons or whatever else, Internet is all the time a very important backbone especially for the web site as they all got a domain name , Tony Harris said.

These extensions as the .EU identify domain name owners as people related with European Union. Unquestionably the domain name is related with European Union. So it’s gone be the same with Latin America, Tony Harris added.

At the time we did the interview with Tony Harris, the coming latin-american extension was aimed to be called .LAC. In order to clarify how and why .LAC was turn into .LAT we asked chairmen of both bodies in charge of this extension : Oscar Messano, Director of eCOM-LAC] and Oscar Robles Garay, [NicMX director.

For Oscar Robles Garay, its has never been .LAC as a matter of fact. We didn’t have the time to choose which name our extension will have. We thought that it could be .LAC but no work had been done thus. When we started the analysis in order to know which label should be appropriate, we understood that .LAT was more potential and far more favorite by internet users. Opinion poll done in various cities as San Diego, Los Angeles, Mexico, Bogota showed that 80-90% were for .LAT.

Oscar Messano explains that a proposal on conditions for the registration at GNSO has been made and a decision from the ICANN board is expected probably during one of its next meeting.

Oscar Robles Garay said that attention must be paid in our conditions in order to avoid any mix up between latin americans and latin europeans as French, Italians, Romanians, Spanish. It will be hard to do as .ASIA regarding residential conditions. For example will United States be included or not ? If the answer is no great number of Latinos could be lost Most Latinos with stong feeling for their cultural belonging are not necessarily leaving in their homeland. A Bolivian citizen leaving in Los Angeles could feel more Latino than the one leaving in Bolivia. I think this is a great difference I hope conditions will be as flexible as possible …

Oscar Messano concluded “After introduction of the project to ICANN we will have to wait between 90 to 120 days for the last appoval that is to say end of 2008, beginning of 2009. To be able to register a .LAT we will have to wait 2009”. Our sponsor, Domaine.fr will be of course among first registrars to apply for accreditation in this new extension.

Hélène de Brettes et Christian Lenk Pour Domaine.info