IF THE internet had a centre of gravity, it would probably be somewhere around the middle of the Atlantic. The Azores, perhaps, sitting almost halfway between Europe and America.

But Paul Twomey, the chief executive of the body that oversees the internet, says that this is about to change. The pull from the Far East, and emerging markets such as India and China, is becoming very strong.

Mr Twomey, who heads the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), says the advance presents a technical challenge. The internet was spawned in America, then took root in the developed world where the use of Roman characters to assign web addresses became the accepted norm.

But that does not make the internet particularly user- friendly in places where the English language cannot be deciphered, let alone spoken. “The problem with the internet is that it’s grown from an English-speaking view of the world. Our biggest focus is how to grow beyond that,” says Twomey.

“The biggest growth is in developing markets, such as India and China.

“We’re starting to think about Hebrew, India and what we call the CJK group of languages, covering Chinese, Japanese and Korean.”

The trouble for Icann, a non-profit corporation with authority over systems that connect computers to web sites, is that to use non-English characters requires a high degree of localisation. At the same time, says Twomey, there is a need to ensure that there is inter-operability with the rest of the internet.

Twomey says: “The risk is that you could end up creating silos that are separated from each other. That’s why we want to have a technical body to oversee it . . . if you put it in the hands of individual governments you inherently politicise it.”

There is a hint of defensiveness in Twomey’s words, and that is because Icann’s authority over the internet is under siege.

The organisation is the subject of five lawsuits, all of which accuse it of overstepping its boundaries by influencing decisions on issues such as content and delivery.

The latest and most high profile suit was brought by VeriSign, a loss-making US firm in charge of allocating “.com” addresses.

It accuses Icann of acting as a business regulator by preventing its controversial Wait Listing Service (WLS) for expired domain names.

The International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the United Nations, meanwhile, is debating whether world governments should oversee internet policy matters directly instead of Icann. A working group has been set up to debate the issue and will report back next year.

Twomey says that putting the technical administration of the internet into the hands of governments would ultimately create islands of information, rather than a single surfable web.

“Governments have an important role in terms of public policy, crime prevention and content. But putting the technical elements into the political arena makes it a bargaining tool,” he says.

The issue will become even more important as the internet goes wireless.

Nine top computer companies, mobile handset makers and telecoms operators this week announced plans for a new internet names registry company to issue domain names for wireless devices in an attempt to boost mobile services.

The new firm, which Icann has yet to approve, will establish an as yet unnamed domain tag to simplify mobile access to the internet, replacing the many addresses with the mobile equivalent of the .com domain tag.

Twomey agrees that the internet should be allowed to take flight from the desktop computer.

“The challenge for the internet is not so much about what it is, but how to use it. What we need to ensure is that we embrace change but don’t lose touch with the concept that the internet is a global community,” he says.

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