[Chapter-delegates] Bulgaria moves to register Cyrillic Internet domain

[Gene Gaines]

I am very pleased to see SAITC (Bulgarian State Agency for Information
Technologies and Communicatoins), with important support from the Bulgarian
ISOC chapter, <http://www.daits.government.bg/>take the step of requesting
registration of a Cyrillic TLD from ICANN. (below)

If "The Internet is for Everyone" then we must provide the means for
everyone to communicate using their language and their character set.

Congratulation ISOC.bg

Gene Gaines
VP, DCISOC (Washington DC Area Chapter of ISOC)
*
*On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Dessi Pefeva <dpefeva at isoc.bg> wrote:

>  I am happy to announce that the Bulgarian government has shown officially
> its intent to register the .бг (.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 23rd,
> 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
> .бг (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>
>
>
>
> *Ms. Dessi Pefeva,
> Internet Society - Bulgaria*
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates
>
>
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