The internet is to become a truly global venture after the most recent changes from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) were announced.

It was revealed that the first internet addresses containing characters not from Latin script from start to finish will soon be published online after their approval today (October 30th), established under the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) Fast Track Process.

Any small businesses in IT hoping to set up other international operations may be boosted by the news.

Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer of ICANN, said this is only the first step though it is a huge and historic move towards the true "internationalisation" of the World Wide Web.

He continued: "The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online - people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives."

ICANN is currently also chiefly responsible for the global co-ordination of unique domain identifiers, including the likes of .org, .uk and .museum.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.