Amsterdam, May 25th 2005

Hans Bakker, Public-Root CEO, announced today the delegation of three Chinese character Top Level Domains (TLDs) in the Public-Root. The TLDs sponsored by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) of the People's Republic of China are "" (".gongsi" for "company"), "" (".wangluo" which means "networking"), and "" the Simplified Chinese character extension for China.

"The efforts of the Chinese Government in launching multilingual TLDs is a historical event in Internet history" said Bakker. Pre-launch preparations in China would see over 50 Million Chinese Internet users accessing the new domains. "This is a revolution in trade, commerce and communications," he said.

The wide usability of multilingual domain names was achieved in China through a successful distribution program. Search engines, leading Chinese software developers and the four national ISPs adopted the necessary software to enable their users.

The continued effort by MII to increase widespread deployment of Chinese character domains should result in near-100% usability within the year in the Greater Chinese community. This community accounts for roughly one-quarter of all Internet users worldwide.