Today marks 4 years from the beginning of priority registration of domain names in .РФ domain. Priority registration of Cyrillic domain names in .РФ domain started November 25, 2009. September 16, 2010 priority registration closed. From November 11, 2010 name registration in national domain became available for all the citizens of the Russian Federation.
Priority registration is a permission to register domain names for certain categories of users (owners of trademarks, trade names, etc.) Priority registration is a common practice when launching new root domain zones. This allows trademark owners to register their domain names prior to the opening of registration of the second-level domains for everyone, which can help reduce the number of possible domain name disputes.
For the nine months of priority registration in .РФ domain 18 391 domain names were registered and 6 664 of them were delegated prior to the beginning of an opened registration. Almost a half of the names were registered in Moscow, 9% in Moscow region and 8% more in Saint Petersburg.
As of today there are 840 894 domain names in .РФ domain, 663 415 or 78,9% of them are delegated. Almost 55% of domain names in .РФ zone are over 2 years old, 293 102 from them are over 3 years old. .РФ domain is the largest IDN-domain in the world and by the number of domain names is quite comparable with the traditional country domains, for example, .РФ in among 20 largest national European domains and ranks № 16.
«.РФ domain has proved its worth, domain names in .РФ are in demand by businesses and individual users. Domain is developing and it has taken its place on the Internet. It seems to me that the whole story of the implementation of .РФ domain is not just a page in the history of the development of domain industry; it is also an attraction to the Internet for a great number of Russian users. The most popular media covered all the stages of .РФ formation; it was a significant event not only for the professionals of domain market, but for the whole country. So .РФ domain affected the development of Russian Internet in general. And now new top-level domains that will appear on the net in the coming months will learn from its experience. Thanks to everyone who was working on creation, development and promotion of the first Cyrillic domain .РФ together with us,» said the Coordination Center director Andrei Kolesnikov.
