The number of Cyrillic domains registered in the com.ua and kiev.ua zones has reached 10,000, administrator of the ua domain, Dmytro Kokhmaniuk, said at the seventh congress of the Internet Association of Ukraine (InAU) on Feb. 18.
He said that this is 2% of the general number of domains registered in the .UA zone, which shows the interest of Ukrainians in Cyrillic domains.
At the same time, the president of Internet Invest Ltd. (one of the largest national domain registrars Imena.UA, hosting provider MiroHost.net, Kyiv), Oleksandr Olshansky, expressed concern about the presence of such an interest. According to his data, over 6,000 domains out of the mentioned 10,000 were registered only for the purpose of protecting companies that own various brands from cybersquatting (buying up attractive domains for their further resale).
"If a domain zone had normal administrator, it would never admit that the priority task for 2010 was the start of registration of Cyrillic domains. There are much more important tasks," he said.
Olshansky stated once more that there was a need to draw up rules of work for administrators of national and regional Ukrainian domain zones.
As reported, the registration of IDN-Cyrillic domains (Internationalized Domain Names) in the com.ua and kiev.ua zones was launched on Oct. 19, 2010.
During the first stage, which lasted until November 17, the owners of word Cyrillic trademarks and well-known logos registered Cyrillic domains in com.ua and kiev.ua after submitting the relevant documents. The second stage, which lasted from Nov. 19 until Dec. 19, 2010, allowed the IDN to be registered for 10 years.
Free registration of Cyrillic domains, on the same principles as the registration of Roman domains in com.ua and kiev.ua, started on December 21.
