Latin America may soon see a new domain extension: .lat – ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is currently accepting proposals for the development of .lat, and at the moment NIC Mexico (domain registration in Mexico) is the frontrunner.

Most Latin America countries have their own domain extensions, but there are none that cover the whole region. This is good news for companies that not only have a local presence but regional as well – could make a website, at least the URL point-of-view (content is another story) more relevant to a whole region apposed to the country extension. Good for social sites too.

Take VISA for example, their Latin American and Caribbean site is currently www.visalatam.com, once .lat becomes available it could be www.visa.lat. My only question is: will people think it is Latvia, which is actually .lv?

Other’s that have a regional domain extension are Asia (.asia) and the European Union (.eu)