For less than a month from the start of registration of domains in Cyrillic “bg”, 3285 names of the native alphabet have been already requested. 1690 organizations and citizens have used the opportunity to be included in the new Bulgarian Internet Area. From 8th of February until 8th of May is the period in which are requested and registered domains with “protected” names as well as addresses in Cyrillic, which do not enter in the lists of reserved names.
The Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications (MTITC) prepares the Register with “protected” names for the necessities of the state in dialogue with the state institutions. The lists are provided to the organization, which handles the Internet Area.bg – “NAMES.BG” AD. They contain the names of the areas, municipalities, villages, state institutions, geographical names.
Until the present stage legal entities, areas administrations and state institutions have placed requests. Among the willing for Internet address in Cyrillic are also foreign companies, e.g. automobiles manufacturers. Often are the cases in which private persons request to register Internet names in Cyrillic, related to the main institutions in the country as president.bg, parliament.bg, sofia.bg etc. as well as with big companies. The registration procedure, however envisages that the requesters must provide a large number of documents, which prove the right and interest of the organization or the company to keep a specific name in Internet.
After 8th May, when expires the initial period for requesting “protected” names, is envisaged an ordering of the requests under priority and placing time. Firstly will be registered the domains for which there is only one request. The price for registration and maintenance of 1 domain is approximately 20 BGN per year.
The creation of the area.bg is an example for successful cooperation between the country, public organizations and the private business. A Public Expert Council sits to the Minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications, which monitors the process of administration of the Registers “бг” and “bg“ in order to fulfil the national policy in the area and to protect the public interest.
The aim of creating the Internet area “bg” is to promote the Bulgarian language and culture and to recognize better the participants in the Internet area among the people who are not familiar with the Latin.