Postal services get exclusive '.post' Internet address

Global postal services will soon have their own address on the Internet, after the web's authority for assigning domain names ICANN, said on Friday that it had approved the new address dot post (.post).

The managing rights of the .post top level domain name were granted to the UN's Universal Postal Union, which will set up the rules on which organisations the address could be attributed to.

"People who access a .post site will immediately recognise it as belonging to a valid postal service or provider of postal services," said the UPU, calling it "a piece of real estate space on the Internet."

The .post domains are expected to be online by the second half of 2010 after the UPU and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) signed the agreement here

Although letters are commonly dubbed 'snail mail' in the Internet world, many national postal services have expanded their online presence and services in recent years, and play a key part in delivering e-commerce goods.

"Postal services will explore new frontiers and basically go where no postal services have gone before," UPU Director General Edouard Dayan promised.