Unleashing the power of all domains: the social, cultural, and economic benefits of Universal Acceptance

A new report by Analysys Mason, sponsored by the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), examines the acceptance of new generic top-level Internet domains (gTLDs), which can end in any text string (for example, www.uasg.tech), and internationalised domain names (IDNs), which can be written in scripts other than the Latin script used in English (for instance, Chinese or Russian).

These domains are not always universally accepted by all software, which restricts the benefits associated with their introduction. Universal Acceptance (UA) refers to the process by which software and applications are updated to accept the new domains as valid. This paper explores the progress made towards UA and the benefits that accrue to organisations from implementing UA. We estimate that increased revenues from gTLD users' online purchases alone could be USD3.6 billion per annum. UA of IDNs could bring an additional 17 million Internet users online, with additional revenues from online purchases of USD6.2 billion per annum. This makes a total of USD9.8 billion per annum across all the new domains.

Our research also shows that the efforts required by software owners to implement UA are not onerous, and can be implemented relatively rapidly. The benefits of implementation are likely to outweigh the costs required to do so. Our research has found that the main impediment to the implementation of UA is awareness, which this paper seeks to address.

To view the full report, click on the link on the download box on the right.