Nama Thai Helps Thais to Reach Online Destination Easily.

The service, called Nama Thai (Thai Name), is designed to help Thais who are not familiar with English names of websites to be able to reach their desired online destination.

The Nam Thai service is provided by Pasa Intermation, a new, local software company. It will provide Thai websites easy-to-access choices of website names in the Thai language.

Pasa Intermation managing director Pataisan Bodhidatta said that even though the company has been operational since last year, it has spent Bt20 million, and one and a half year in research and development on Native Language Internet Address (NLIA) with its technology partner, Korea-based company Netpia.

Based on the NLIA technology, the company has developed a Thai Internet Address (THIA) system to create the Nama Thai service, which will allow Internet users to browse with Thai characters, instead of English. Nama Thai covers three main services -- Thai Name, Thai Word, and Thai Brand.

Utilising the THIA system, Pasa Intermetion has used names, company titles, products, brand names, telephone numbers and even anniversary dates in its promotion and marketing campaigns.

Besides enabling the use of Thai characters while surfing, the service also does away with the need for typing "WWW" and ".com" or ".net" to access websites.

"We are trying to compete with Google because we are different from a search engine. We provide one-to-one matching between Internet names and websites. Users are guaranteed that they will reach their desired Web destination in one go, by typing Thai names," Pataisan said.

At the backend, the company has used THIA to map Thai characters to websites. When Internet users type Thai names of websites they want to access, the system will automatically match and connect to the exact website or destination webpage.

The Nama Thai service is linked to 8,000 organisations, most of which are from the government and public sector. This service is provided free of charge to government and public-sector organisations but private enterprises will have to pay a service charge.

"We expect about 25,000 customers by the end of next year. And we expect to generate revenues of about Bt40 million in that period," Pataisan said.

Currently, about 5,000 Thai entities are linked to the Nama Thai service, such as Thai Air Asia, INET, KSC, True, JiNEt and CS Loxinfo.

 "INET, KSC, True Internet, JiNEt, and CS Loxinfo are our Internet partners who offer their users the opportunity to experience the Nama Thai service free of charge. The collaboration with these five Internet service providers (ISPs), we can tap about 80 per cent of the 15 million Internet users in Thailand," Pataisan said.

Thai Air Asia marketing manager Chernijt Shovityakool said about 70 per cent of the company's total revenues comes from its website, with one million visitors accessing it each month. The company hopes the Nama Thai service will help it bridge the gap with potential customers who are not familiar with English names of websites. It expects the service to help the company increase its revenues by about 20 per cent.

The company plans to leverage the Nama Thai service for an online mapping service 'Point Thailand', on personal websites and blogs, and for Internet devices.