For the seventh time in a row, the Czechs showed no interest in the option of registering .CZ domains with diacritics. It is evidenced by the results of the public opinion poll conducted this autumn for CZ.NIC, the Czech national domain administrator. 88% of corporate respondents and 64% of ordinary Internet users were against the introduction of the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN).

A total of 1,015 representatives of organizations and 1,206 individual Internet users participated in the survey, with more than three-quarters of representatives of organizations and more than half of users not being supportive of diacritics in Czech domain names. The former showed an increase of 2% compared to the last survey in 2016, and the latter figure has increased by nine percent. The majority of the online Czech public sees the current situation as satisfactory, reasonable and well-established while on the other hand it perceives the use of diacritical marks as confusing, unnecessarily complicated to foreign users and risky in terms of possible errors and typos.

“The repeated rejection of IDN in the .CZ domain zone is not surprising. Among other things, the survey also showed that for Internet users, IDN is not a desirable feature or a priority. The respondents stated that topics of Internet security, online protection or the availability of a quality Internet connection were more important to them,” said Ondřej Filip, CEO of CZ.NIC. “This survey focused not only on IDN, but also on the perception of CZ.NIC and its projects by the public. We are pleased that Internet users appreciate our awareness-raising and educational activities and that they perceive us as a reliable partner.”

Detailed survey results including additional information related to IDN can be found at the URL www.háčkyčárky.cz.

About IDN

IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) is a system that enables Internet domain names to contain characters of national alphabets. The basic idea, which led to the creation of IDN, was to simplify communication and use of the Internet for those whose written language contains alphabetic characters not included in the English alphabet. IDN would find its greatest application in Asian countries. CZ.NIC has been attending to the IDN issue (i.e. the use of diacritical marks in domain names) for a long time. Technically, the Association is ready to introduce IDN right away. However, the decisive factor is the public opinion, which the Czech national domain administrator ascertains in surveys conducted every two years.