As Russia opens up its .?? (.RF in Cyrillic) domain to foreign (non-Russian) applicants (the new rules apply from November 11, 2011), comes another reminder of the country's incredible success with its IDN ccTLD (Internationalised Domain Name country code Top Level Domain).

Registration in the Cyrillic domain opened on November 11, 2010. Today, more than 900,000 domains have been registered! An incredible number, underlined by the fact that 68% of those names have been delegated (i.e. they are ready to be used on the Internet) and 25% are linked to working websites.

Russia's sense of national pride remains as strong as ever, as shown by the fact that the TLD has proven most popular with individuals. They account for 70% of registrations, businesses covering the remaining 30%.

One leading Russian registrar polled its clients and found that a whopping 90% of private individual domain owners plan to renew, and that 62% of registrants consider that the Cyrillic domain is easier to use and understand for them than the equivalent ASCII domain.

Valeri Borisov, Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications watches on as ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom attempts to explain his organization's refusal to allow Bulgaria's 2 character Cyrillic domain. Photo Domain Forum.

Taking part in the Domain Forum in Bulgaria is turning out to be an extremely interesting experience providing a unique insight into other communities' concerns and issues with Internet governance in general, and ICANN in particular.

The big issue here is ICANN's refusal to grant Bulgaria a Cyrillic IDN .BG TLD. In March 2011, ICANN turned down the country's request, made under the IDN ccTLD fast track program, citing possible confusion problems between the requested TLD and Brazil's ASCII ccTLD .BR.

This was the second time Bulgaria had submitted the request, after being snubbed by ICANN a first time in May 2010.

Debate today has centered around this issue, with local Internet users obviously still smarting at the ICANN decision and both government officials in attendance mentioning the issue in their respective panel appearances as obvious criticism of ICANN.

ICANN's IDN ccTLD fast track is considered non transparent by Bulgarians, who do not feel they have had adequate rationale from ICANN on why they are not being allowed to use the Internet in their own script and language.

Valeri Borisov, Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications, in attendance at the Domain Forum event, explained that his country would most likely make a third request for the IDN TLD to ICANN, but perhaps not under the fast track program. Borisov said he hoped to see Cyrillic Bulgarian websites with a couple of years.