Web addresses ending with Chinese characters are likely to be up for grabs in Hong Kong by the middle of next year, but it is not clear whether this will lead to clarity or confusion.
Jonathan Shea Tat-on, chief executive of Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation, said the company had stepped up a study concerning the impact on internet users after domain name limits were taken off.
It came after a decision last month by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) allowing users to choose their own top-level domain names - commonly known as suffixes. It also voted to allow new suffixes to be in different languages like Chinese or Arabic.
Mr Shea's company, responsible for issuing .hk domain names, is a leading candidate to run the suffix registration in future.
The change would mean the possibility of domains bearing suffixes like .hk in Chinese characters, but Mr Shea, also a member of Icann, said limitations would be imposed.
'The registration procedure for these new domain names is still under discussion. But it is suggested that a Chinese suffix cannot be longer than three or four characters, while ones in Latin languages cannot exceed five or six characters,' he said, adding that applicants would not be allowed to register .hk suffixes in languages other than Chinese and English initially.