The Russian national Cyrillic domain .рф started operating in normal
mode today after noon. 476 sites became available in the evening, RIA
Novosti reports citing a member of the council of the Coordination
Center of the National Domain of the internet network, Yuliy
Ovchinnikov.
The first two sites of the .рф zone became available for users from
May 13th - the site of the Russian president and the government.
The Russian national Cyrillic top level domain received the official
name .рф on the 5th November 2008 within the framework of the 33th
conference of ICANN in Cairo. The final delegating of the domain was
on 22nd April 2010. The Coordination Center became the domain's
administrator.
Russia became the first country with a non-latin alphabet to receive a
country-domain based on the national alphabet. At the end of last year
state agencies and companies started priority reserving of the new
domain. This was planned to be completed in spring but it was decided
to change the rules of priority reserving and it was prolonged to the
autumn of 2010. In the future anyone will have an opportunity to
reserve a domain name. So far there are 12 000 addresses reserved.
The Ministry of Communication forecasts 25-50 thousand sites will have
a .рф domain. They also plan to establish an electronic postal service
to allow citizens to communicate with state officials.
