What is likely to be one of the more successful of the new gTLDs has gone online this week with websites using the Arabic .shabaka going online a day ahead of schedule, reported the BBC. General availability commenced Tuesday.

“The DotShabaka Registry – the Dubai-based business running the شبكة. gTLD – announced that both its own homepage and that of the United Arab Emirates telecoms provider Etisalat had started using its new suffix, at a conference in Dubai.”

“It’s monumental, in my opinion, because it means the internet finally speaks in Arabic,” Yasmin Omer, general manager of the DotShabaka Registry told the BBC.

“For a long time we’ve had Arabic-language content online but you needed to speak English to directly navigate to the sites.

“Now, if I’m an internet user that speaks only Arabic, I don’t need to rely on search engines or other pools to get to where I want.”

In another report, Omar told Gulf News “two hundred and fifty companies have registered for the “.Shabaka”.

Its not the first Arabic TLD, but it is the first Arabic gTLD. Country code TLDs  including .الاردن for Jordan and .السعودية for Saudi Arabia, which went live in 2010.

“Other non-Latin script gTLDs expected to launch over the coming days include 游戏, Mandarin for game; сайт, Russian for site; and онлайн, Russian for online,” the BBC reported.