ICAAN okays Cyrillic domain zone for Belarus

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved Belarus' application for a top-level Cyrillic domain .бел, representatives of the company Reliable Software (hoster.by), the technical administrator of the domain zone .by, told BelTA.

Once the new domain zone is implemented, anyone will be able to register website names in Russian and Belarusian while URLs like новости.бел and навiны.бел may become quite common, explained the source.

Several organizational procedures have to be accomplished for the new domain zone to become available officially.

Hoster.by Director Sergei Povalishev remarked that the launch of the new top-level domain zone .бел will become a big step in the development of the Belarusian part of the World Wide Web. “As the technical administrator of the zone .by we believe it is very important to have an alternative national domain that will be more comprehensible for a large number of users. The domain zone will be able to more clearly indicate the affiliation of a website with Belarus and make a certain contribution to the development of the Belarusian culture,” he explained.

Yet Sergei Povalishev remarked that experienced and practically minded Internet users will frown upon the new domain zone as excessiveness. “Still we believe that the development of the national domain space should follow the way of more choice and opportunities for self-expression instead of countering global trends. Despite its globalization the World Wide Web is inclined towards nationalization and specialization these days,” stressed the specialist.

Before website registration in the domain zone .бел becomes publicly available, several phases of priority website name registration will be arranged, including for owners of trademarks and commercial names. The registration rules will be identical to those used for the domain zone .by.