On 22 September 2011, Coordination Center for TLD RU held a roundtable on results of the 4th International Conference for ccTLD registries and registrars of the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe at the ITAR-TASS press center.
Andrey Kolesnikov, CC’s CEO, opened the roundtable. He briefed attendees about the conference. “This year, the conference in Serbia got together representatives of ccTLD registries and registrars from 28 countries. Many of them spoke not only about their achievements but also about various challenges facing the industry. There were many interesting presentations, particularly from Kazakhstan. On the one hand, Kazakhstan is to be delegated Cyrillic domain .КАЗ, while, experiencing some difficulties in dialogue between the internet community and the government, on the other. Representatives from Great Britain, Montenegro, to name a few, delivered provocative presentations.” Mr. Kolesnikov related to the conference participants about the progress of CC’s ongoing projects. “Russia has become a pioneer with genuine engagement in the introduction of an IDN ccTLD domain, in our case, domain .РФ, - noted Mr. Kolesnikov. We launched registration in domain .РФ on 11 November 2010, and just in the 1st year of its life, it hit the mark of 895,000 registered domain names instead of planned 75,000 one. Now we are witnessing disputes about how many domain names will be extended by the end of the year and very different numbers are cited, though I figure that just 10-15% of domain names will not be renewed.”
The roundtable participants heatedly discussed the issue of the introduction of new Terms and conditions of domain names registration in domains .RU and .РФ by Coordination Center. “Now we have posted draft new procedures for public discussion, - said Mr. Kolesnikov, - and, in my opinion, they are quite good and operable. It’s worth noting that these procedures are not a calque of the earlier ones; rather, they are brand new, written from scratch, and have taken into account all the stakeholders’ views. They better define the domains’ administrators and registrars’ rights and duties. In a short while we will introduce final amendments in the procedures. A planned regular meeting of the CC Board will be either on the 5th, or the 6th of October, 2011, and in event the Board approves new Terms and conditions of domain names registration in domains .RU and .РФ, then they will come into force in one month after that. The section concerning domain name disputes resolution remains the only questionable one. To improve it we will most likely form a separate ad-hock working group of lawyers.”
Olga Aleksandrova-Myasina spoke about new CC’s statistical project Domains of Russia and provided some up-to-date statistics. Specifically, she noted that ccTLD domain .RU boasted of 3,451,000 registered domain names and by the number of registered domain names it ranked 4th in the global ccTLD ranking, having outrun both China’s ccTLD .CN and .EU of the European Union by the end of August.
The last to speak at the roundtable was Dmitry Belyavsky who briefed attendees on the “Virtual Registrar” project, which is a new soft- and hardware complex enabling registrars to cut their software development costs.
