The .asia regional Internet domain has officially opened for business. The domain comes after the launch of the European-based .eu name last year and aims to join .com and .net as a widely used website suffix.

Businesses with trademarks, governments and official bodies will be allowed to register website addresses ending with the suffix initially. The general public will be allowed to bid from February, 2008. "More than 350 companies have already applied for the .asia domain including Yahoo, Cosmopolitan, Amazon, the Economist and T-Mobile,' said Edmon Chung, ceo of DotAsia Organization, the Hong Kong-based, not-for-profit group that is setting up the new domain under the oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icann)