[EURO-Discuss] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic Internet domain

Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de
Mon Jun 30 09:58:34 EDT 2008


Congratulations to all Bulgarians and others who had helped to make this happen. Hopefully ICANN will take this to the "Fast Track". A good day for Internet Users in Bulgaria. 
 
Wolfgang
 

________________________________

Von: euro-discuss-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org im Auftrag von Dessi Pefeva
Gesendet: Di 24.06.2008 11:10
Betreff: [EURO-Discuss] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic Internet domain



I am happy to announce that the Bulgarian government has shown
officially its intent to register the .?? (.bg in Cyrillic) domain. They
did it in a letter, sent yesterday to ICANN's President Paul Twomey.
This is due also thanks to the efforts of ISOC-Bulgaria. Bulgarian
President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and the Minister of ITC are
all members of ISOC. They have talked on a number of times in the past
six months with ISOC.bg on these issues.

Obviously the conversations have been fruitful. See more information
here: http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKL2360195920080623

And this is the official press-release from the ITC Agency:

Bulgaria has requested the registration of a Cyrillic top level domain
(TLD) from _ICANN_ <http://www.icann.org/>. The letter from the chairman
of the Bulgarian State Agency for Information Technologies and
Communicatoins (_SAITC_ <http://www.daits.government.bg/>) Plamen
Vatchkov to the president of ICANN Paul Twomey was delivered today, June
23^rd , 2008, in Paris via the Bulgarian representative to the
Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN, and was distributed for
information only in Geneva where the ITU is headquartered. Thus Bulgaria
requested the fast track for implementation of its own Cyrillic IDNs.

In the letter to the ICANN President, the SAITC chairman informs the
authoritative international organization, dealing with assigned names
and numbers, that Bulgaria has decided to register and maintain the
country code .?? (bg in Cyrillic)

Further in the letter, SAITC chairman informs that the discussion on
using Cyrillic domain names was initiated by the President of Bulgaria
Georgi Parvanov during the visit of the Russian President Putin and the
then vice-prime minister, and now President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev
during their visit in January 2008 in Sofia. The question was also
discussed during meetings of Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev
with the Russian counterparts, as well as during talks between foreign
ministers Ivailo Kalfin and Sergei Lavrov. Last week, Russian President
Medvedev announced in Moscow, that the issue of Cyrillic domain names is
an important one, and on his political agenda.

"We believe that the initiative, which we discussed with our Russian
friends in the last months, is a clear fact about the importance which
Bulgaria has in the world Internet. It is an example not only about the
historical meaning of the Cyrillic alphabet in the world arena, but also
about the fact that through Bulgaria it became an official alphabet of
the European Union. By sending this letter to Dr. Twomey -- ICANN's
president and my friend, SAITC expresses not only the wish, but the
readiness to put the Cyrillic IDNs on the Internet map", says Plamen
Vatchkov. "There's nothing more natural than the proposed domain to be
the country code, which is already known and accepted in the country
itself. Creating domains in scripts, different from the Latin, is the
next big step in the development of the Internet, which will allow
millions of people who don't use English to have easier access to the
Global Net resources".

SAITC is organizing a meeting later this year in Sofia, where all
countries, using Cyrillic will be invited - Belarus, Bulgaria,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mongolia, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and Ukraine. The meeting will be dedicated to discussion
about IDNs.

for more information:
Press Center
phone +359-2-9492368
"Ekaterina Popova" <epopova at daits.government.bg
<mailto:epopova at daits.government.bg>>



/Ms. Dessi Pefeva,
Internet Society - Bulgaria/

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