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.