The internet could be broken up in future by cultural differences between nations, according to one leading expert.

Nitin Desai, chair of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), says ignoring whole countries and regions could lead to a "Balkanisation" of the net. He cited the concerns of Chinese net users who do not use the Latin alphabet, who want to be able to access web pages using Chinese characters.

He said: "If I look at the internet in five years from now there are going to be many more internet users in Asia than in Europe or America.

"There's a point at which the Chinese will say, sorry, we have to have domain names in Chinese characters, and they will set up an independent system."

He said that could lead to other regions setting up their own networks, without connections to the rest of the internet.

Mr Desai made the remarks at a London conference discussing the future of the internet, organised by Nominet, which registers all UK domain names. He said that the forthcoming meetings of the IGF, which meets shortly, will be the place to discuss these potential problems.

Emily Taylor, director of legal and policy for Nominet, told Computeractive that the internet's governing bodies recognised the need to cater for users in the developing world.

However, she said that previous attempts to set up alternative networks had failed, because they didn't allow users to communicate with other internet users.

She said: "My view is that if this 'Balkanisation' were to occur it would be so inconvenient for users that they would vote with their feet and come back to the internet."