Russian Cyrillic Domain Passes ICANN String Evaluation

On January 21, 2010, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first four countries to meet a specific set of linguistic and technical requirements required under the ICANN’s IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) ccTLD Fast Track String Evaluation.

The ICANN has received a total of 17 requests for an IDN ccTLD through the String Evaluation process, representing ten languages, but only four countries listed above have so far passed the evaluation.

The next step for the four approved countries is to request String Delegation. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management.

This is an important milestone for domain names written entirely in local scripts, in this case Cyrillic and Arabic.

The Fast Track String Evaluation was approved on October 30, 2009 by the ICANN Board.

A full overview of activities and links to the materials related to this matter can be found here.

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic in our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: ICANN