Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) booked six Arabic domains for its official website within the Internet domain of the UAE in Arabic language “.Emarat”.

With this, Dewa has become the first government department to use the Arabic domain.

These domains will be activated very shortly enabling the possibility  to write e-mail addresses in Arabic language for the first time, as well as doing all correspondence in Arabic without any need for English keyboards.

“The Arabic domain emphasizes Dewa’s vision which embodies pioneering and excellent services,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dewa.

“It also reflects Dewa’s relentless efforts to apply the best state-of-the-art practices and systems to provide government services with the highest standards and excellence that come in line with Dubai’s strategic plan 2015 and its objectives for building a knowledge-based economy.”

“It also sheds the light on UAE’s continuous efforts to encourage all initiatives that can leverage the value of Arabic Language giving it a strong impetus and support,” Al Tayer added.

This step taken by Dewa comes after the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority’s (TRA) success with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in approving the string (.Emarat) as the official Arabic top level domain for the UAE.

With this achievement, the UAE became one of the first four countries in the world to use domain names in their official languages and not in Roman script, reinforcing the country’s leading position in the Internet and ICT sectors.

ICANN has recently approved Arabic language, as the first language in the world that does not require Latin scripts to be used in writing domain names.

Arabic is the seventh most popular language in the world in terms of web use, and it is the fastest growing language in terms of size of content compared to other languages with 60 million Arab Internet users. – TradeArabia News Service