The Coordination Center for ccTLD .RU participated in the telecommunications forum TELFOR 2010 held in Belgrade, Serbia on 23-25 November 2010. The largest regional platform for experts in thecommunication and information technologies area, this year’s TELFOR was the 18th event in succession and got together technical experts, economists, lawyers, managers, government officials, students, researchers and representatives of service providers outnumbering a total of 2,000.
This year, the forum focused on the launch of non-Latin IDN domains in the Internet. For the Serbian Internet community this is not just a hot potato: in literally two weeks prior to the event, the Serbian Cyrillic domain was approved by the ICANN and Serbia now is to follow Russia’s path in introducing its ccTLD .РФ. A presentation by a member of the CC’s Board, Julia Ovchinnikova, “Russian IDN: first outcomes, first lessons” at the workshop “.СРБ – Cyrillic domain of Serbia” stirred the participants’ interest.
“It is hard to remain a Slav in the Anglo-Saxon Internet environment,” – opened her presentation Ms. Ovchinnikova. She focused on challenges which faced the Internet community in Russia at the launch of ccTLD .РФ. Russia’s solutions will help the Serbian Registry to launch ccTLD .СРБ. She dispelled the Serbian colleagues’s concerns that the new Cyrillic domain may fall short of being in demand. “The higher the level of broadband availability is, the higher the number of domain names demanded by the population is going to be,” – explained Julia. – “We notice the Ministry of Telecom and the local information community of Serbia have made development of access to the Internet nationwide their priority task. This means that very soon a day will come when the population of Serbia will be actively using the Internet. The development of the Internet infrastructure is followed by an increased role of the national domain space because users develop this space very quickly.”
The fact that there are two alphabets in Serbia, that is, the Cyrillic and Latin ones, may pose problems for the Cyrillic domain .СРБ, though, the Serbian colleagues assert. Young people, who are main users of the Internet in Serbia, mainly use Latin, and the Serbian Registry is concerned that the local Cyrillic domain may fail. However, introduction of the national domain is the responsibility shared by the Registry and the Government. That is why, Ms. Ovchinnikova believes, the Serbian Registry may rely on the support from the very top, as it was and still is happens in Russia.
On the whole, the roundtable discussion addressed a number of key issues which pop up at the launch of the national IDN-domain and provided the Serbian colleagues with Russia’s unique experience in developing the Cyrillic domain.
