Web addresses will now be available in Arabic in a move being billed as a 'milestone in internet history'

In a move that is being billed as a historic achievement for one of the world's leading languages, web addresses will now be available in Arabic as part of a wider move to open up cyberspace to domain names in multiple, non-Latin scripts.

Egypt, the most populous of Arab countries, announced today that it has begun registering names under the .misr domain. "Misr" is the Arabic name for Egypt. The first three companies to use it are TE Data, Vodafone Data and Link Registrar, said the country's communications minister, Tarek Kamel, hailing "a milestone in internet history".

Instead of using the old .eg domain name, organisations in Egypt can use ."misr", written from right to left in Arabic script as the default country code for domestic websites. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are also introducing the new codes, respectively ".Al-Saudiah" and ".Emarat".

One of the first of these "internationalised domain names" leads to the Egyptian communications ministry. If a browser has the correct fonts installed, the user should see an Arabic name. When you mouse-over or click on the link, what you see will depend on the browser. "Confusing for us, a relief for the Arab world," commented the specialist IT site THINQ.co.uk.

The move comes six months after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Icann, approved the use of non-Latin domain names.

The innovation is a significant moment for the internationalisation of the world wide web – half of whose users do not use a Latin script as their primary language.

Arabic accounts for 1% of all web content – though its estimated 280 million speakers constitute 5% of the global population – but until now it has had to be hosted under Latin addresses, creating practical problems and conveying a sense of linguistic discrimination.

"This great step will open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt," said Kamel. "It will boost the number of online users in the country and will enable internet services to penetrate new market segments by eliminating language barriers."

Internet access in Egypt is becoming cheaper and the use of internet on mobile devices is blossoming. The government is planning a $1bn (£673m) upgrade to its broadband capacity over four years to quadruple penetration to 20%.

Announced on the Icann blog, the new system improves previous workaround solutions in Thailand and China, which are not recognised universally. Icann said it expects some teething troubles, but software updates for web browsers, such as downloading additional language packs, should help.

Blogging is popular in many Arab countries. Arabic users on the internet have increased by more than 2,000% over the last decade. But content still punches below its weight and spending on advertising remains tiny. Microsoft and Google include Arabic in their top 10 languages in need of prioritised attention and are working hard to increase access: one glaring example of its underdevelpoment is that the Arabic portal of online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, carries less words than its site in Catalan, which is spoken by 9 million people.