News Conference in ITAR-TASS "SU Domain: New Status and Prospects"

At the end of June 2008 Maintenance Agency for Registered Codes of the International Standardization Organization Countries (Committee ISO3166/MA) made a decision to transfer SU code to the category of exclusively reserved ones. It has been announced today by Veni Markovsky - ICANN representative in Russia and CIS, who was making a speech at the news conference in ITAR-TASS. The news conference was also attended by Galina Soldatova - Director of Internet Development Fund; Vladimir Molchanov - Deputy Director of Internet Development Fund; Alexey Platonov - Director of RIPN - SU Domain Technical Center. Timur Aitov - senior advisor of ITAR-TASS was a conference speaker.

SU domain administration extended gratitude to ICANN for the assistance in rendering constructive negotiations with the International Standardization Organization as regards SU code transfer to the category of exclusively reserved ones. Such decision-making allowed settling the main controversy related to domain existence. We shall remind that to-date SU code was classified as temporarily reserved for the transfer period. Committee ISO3166/MA made a specific decision to fix temporary reserve period with further re-use of the code - 50 years to allow re-using of both SU code and domain up to 2042. The decision adopted by the International Standardization Organization enables to cancel all time restrictions regarding SU code and domain existence.

The full text of the joint decision of Internet Development Fund and ICANN on decision-making of Committee ISO3166/MA was announced today at the news conference and published on domains information resource pages info.nic.ru. It particularly quotes: "This decision serves an outcome of the constructive dialogue between Internet Development Fund and ICANN. ICANN played its positive role in settling dispute on SU domain by clear expression of its stance and taking actions within their competence. Eventually, all parties positively settled the problem in favor of Internet stability and security with accommodation of SU domain users' interests".

RIPN is an official IANA national two-digit domain base SU domain registrant up to date, de-facto SU domain is under control of Internet Development Fund, following the Memorandum of Understanding signed by RIPN and Internet Development Fund as of January 20, 2001. In relation to "SU Domain Support and Development Agreement" signed September 19, 2007, Alexey Platonov stressed that RIPN will shortly delegate the registrant's functions to the Fund, keeping SU Domain Technical Center reserved. Alexey Platonov qualified the talks disseminated in media on association of SU domain to Soviet days, due to a number of actions oriented at full-scale development of SU domain, as "a sheer nonsense": "SU domain was never related to official USSR, neither was it "bureaucratized", furthermore, this particular domain paved democratic way for our country. SU is certainly far from national Russian domain, nevertheless it is a territorial, more like a Eurasian domain, covering all CIA countries".

According to Internet Development Fund representatives, foreign registrars will shortly gain access to registration of SU domains. Vladimir Molchanov has an opinion that keen interest to this domain will persist. Though, it is quite a compact area (slightly exceeding 70 th. registered Secondary level domains), SU has gathered around a stable society, making all prerequisites for SU domain further dynamic growth. By the way, the news conference addressed background report prepared by RU-CENTER with SU domain development details. RU-CENTER experts estimated that Internet users address SU domain sites more than 50 mln. times a day.

"SU Domain Development is a Part of Russia's Contemporary History", - resumed by Galina Soldatova. In slightly more than a month SU domain will gain its full maturity status, and it is noteworthy that domain age corresponds to that of Russia's contemporary civil society that has no more fear of historical background associated with the domain name, but competently and efficiently uses historical heritage in routine life.