Netpia's
Globalization Effort
The company signs Local Operator License Agreement with Indonesia
Netpia signed Local Operator License Agreement(LOLA) with the partners from Indonesia including Pt. Sejahtera Damai Bersama to provide the Indonesian Internet Address service. Shortly following the signing of LOLA, a joint-stock company will be incorporated in Indonesia, as it will serve as the local operator in providing the NLIA service in the country. The official NLIA service is expected to launch early this year and is the second partnership that Netpia achieved in Southeast Asia only. Netpia will try to present continuous efforts to provide NLIA service as a Global project that will allow all people to access Internet with their own local languages and will bring more contributions to bridge the digital gap divides.
Netpia, the operator of Korean Internet addresses, is on the way to globalize its operation. The company plans to internationalize the use of its Korean Internet address in the next 10 years, Lee Pan-jung, the founder of Netpia said last September when the World Convention of Native Language Internet Address Operators was underway in Seoul.
He said Netpia is 10 years old already, thanks to the support and concern of those who paid attention to the company, which hired a number of professionals recently to make a further jump to be known as 'global Netpia.'
Netpia, the founder said, has successfully operated the Korean Internet Address for it to take a firm root in the country. But it will make a far bigger growth in the next 10 years, he predicted, led by the two new presidents, who have been making strenuous efforts that native language Internet address take a firm hold in the world. Lee Geum-yong is president of the domestic operation, while President Lee Byung-hoon takes care of the international operation.
The domain name was created in 1985 and its commercialization began about 10 years ago when Internet users totaled 10 million. But the same concept of architecture is still in use, although the number of Internet users now totals 700 million around the world.
It solved the early limit of addresses to a degree, but it has many problems to cope with Internet users exceeding 700 million and going over 1 billion in the near future.
If e-mail is used in its native language in each Internet using country, the number would be astronomical, considering 700 million Internet users around the world. Founder Lee said our Internet environment has such a limit because of the English domain we have been using. Netpia has struggled in the last 10 years to globalize the native language Internet address. It came a little too late with Internet users now exceeding 700 million in the world, perhaps. Many experts and UN officials feel very fortunate that Korea has developed a model. We are very happy that we have been able to hold a world convention to make Korea a hub country for native language Internet address for 20 to 30 years down the road, Lee said. Having own language Internet address means that the information gap has been closed. Senior citizens and children who don't know English will now be able to have access to information and data that they didn't have before.
The Native Language Internet Address, a large project which made Korea a model country, has a good chance to be a worldly commodity. The project should involve all human race in the world, which is why the UN has been closely following it. Netpia, a small venture firm in Korea, would like to make the project global, with all human kind participating in its development. In this connection, about 300 Internet experts around the world including Khaled Fattal, head of the consortium of Multilanguage Internet Address (MINC) and Louis Henri Pouzin, who made contribution to the development of TCP/IP, and chairman of the Euro Link of France, and people from 15 countries which introduced their own language Internet address, participated in the meeting. They resolved various current issues for native language Internet address and searched for practical ways to push ahead so that the consortia for native language Internet address could be set up, creating the starting point for global standardization of native language Internet address as next generation Internet address. nw
Netpia Founder Lee Pan-jung.
A scene from the first World Convention of Native Language Internet Address Operators held in Seoul in September, last year. |