Bulgaria has entered an official application today to ICANN for the IDN extension .бг (.bg).

ICANN had raised the issue of IDN extensions at their recent Paris Conference, with a view to introducing a “limited number of non-contentious IDN ccTLDs, while an overall long-term IDN ccTLD policy is being developed” (DomainNews).

A representative of Bulgaria’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) presented Paul Tumi, President of ICANN with their domain application in Paris. This follows reports that the Russian President is supporting the campaign in Russia for the .рф (.rf) domain name.

Technorati Tags: BG, Bulgaria, Domains, ICANN, IDN, RF, Russia

Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation has thrown his weight behind the campaign for a new Cyrillic IDN for the country. The Moscow Times reports that this is part of a new drive to promote Russian as a global language.

He said 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and that a Cyrillic domain name would be a key part of raising the importance of the language, a task he said was his personal priority as president.

We must do everything we can to make sure that we achieve in the future a Cyrillic Internet domain name — it is a pretty serious thing. It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language and Cyrillic. … And I think we have a rather high chance of achieving such a decision.

Medvedev is the most tech-savvy president Russia has had to date. He has publicly used his mobile phone to connect to the Internet and claims to surf online every morning for news (ED: Feel free to comment here Dmitry).

The body responsible for granting Russia’s wishes on this subject is ICANN, the organisation responsible for assigning domain extensions. They are discussing the possibility of true IDN domain extensions at their meeting in Paris later this month. Russia has proposed that it be allowed the .рф (.rf) extension, standing for “Russian Federation”.

If Russian is successful it will become the first country to have a true IDN. While other IDN domain registrations are currently available from some gTLD and ccTLD Registries, the extensions themselves have remained in the Latin character set.

However ICANN are likely to bring up the unresolved dispute over the .SU (Soviet Union) extension. After many requests to the operators to “to freeze new registrations”, this extension is still being actively promoted.

In this authors opinion, there is a good chance that the Russians will accept decommissioning of .SU in exchange for the new IDN extension. Such high profile support for the campaign would instantly move obstacles at the RU/SU operator. It may even impress ICANN, as an indication that their future talks and position in Russia would be taken much more seriously.

With that in mind, it would seem a strategic move to register .SU domains now. There is a good chance that a condition of decommissioning .SU would be a migration of the users to this new domain. Holding a registration could ensure your rights in the new extension without needing to further apply.

Technorati Tags: Dmitry Medvedev, Domaining, Domains, IDN, International Domain Names, RF, Russia, Russian, Soviet Union, SU

The Russian Registry is today asking it’s customer base to vote on the possibility of a new .РФ (.RF) IDN domain name. As they write, ICANN is looking at the possibility of establishing top-level domains using international characters. The final decision on this matter will be taken at the 32nd International Public ICANN Meeting held in Paris this June 22-26 2008.

As the Russian Registry continues, if ICANN approve the introduction of this domain, Russia could become one of the first countries to have a Cyrillic national domain. However they need to show popularity for this extension so ask their customers to vote at their website. Voting will continue until June 3rd, after which they will announce the results.

There was no mention of the current dispute over the .SU (Soviet Union) extension, which ICANN wishes to see closed. At one point it was suggested that .РФ (.RF) IDN could be a replacement for .SU but it now appears that the Russian Registry is angling for all three domains.

Interestingly, the Russian Registry released an article on ICANN yesterday discussing the relationship between the organisation and the US administration. It suggests that some corporate users are, “concerned about the slow movement on some issues, including the introduction of IDN. This is causing an increased interest around the world in alternative, independent addressing systems, which may disturb the integrity of the Internet”. One solution, the article concludes, “could be to transfer the functions of ICANN to the UN”.

Technorati Tags: Domain Names, Domains, ICANN, IDN, IDN RF, RU, Russia