7,000 apply for Chinese .hk addresses
The lack of a distinctively Chinese-Hong Kong presence in internet addresses may soon be a thing of the past.
After five months of inviting submissions for internet domain names in the Chinese language ending with '.hk', almost 7,000 applications have been sent in.
Applicants include government departments, public utilities, international luxury brands, banks and financial services with offices in the city.
Jonathan Shea Tat-on, chief executive of Hong Kong Internet Registration Corp, said he was happy with the response.
'We received an overwhelming response from the community, with 6,862 applications during the soft launch period,' he said.
'These results testify to both the need and the great support for .hk Chinese domain names by users in different sectors.'
A company spokesman said many people, including local celebrities, had started to apply, but he would not say who the celebrities were.
The Chinese domains ending with .hk will be the equivalents of com.hk, edu.hk, gov.hk, idv.hk, net.hk, and org.hk.
While English-language domain names ending with .hk have been available and widely used for years, the Chinese versions are a recent phenomenon. Domain names in Chinese also have been used by businesses and government departments for years in Taiwan and on the mainland, so Hong Kong is a latecomer.
