Demand for internationalized domain names
by Dima on February 25, 2010
in Russia, industry, internet, internet governance
Once a year or so ICANN holds a conference called ICANN Studienkreis. This is another forum where one can get updated with various ongoing internet governance topics. The last meeting took place earlier this week in Barcelona, but unfortunately there was no streaming of the event and I could not find any records or transcripts from it. The only available record is the agenda with links to a number of PDFs of various presentation. These are of course not very informative, but there is still something we can learn from them.
One presentation that caught my attention was by Andrey Kolesnikov from the Russian Coordination Centre for TLD.ru, which he gave in a session on internationlized domain names (PDF). It caught my attention because I got recently interested in the debate surrounding this topic and hoped to learn about how things are going in countries that have already applied for a localized top level domains (other presenters on the panel were from Egypt and China). There is only so much one can learn from just looking at PPT slides, but here is an attempt.
Russia is the only country I know of that has already auctioned localized domain names, even though the approval of the top level domain in Cyrillic is still in the works. As such, Kolesnikov was in a position to shed some light on the actual demand for localized domain names, as opposed to arguments about their great potential. And if I read his slides correctly, I think he did. Here is what he has to show:
The early registration process, or the “sunrise” period, is still going on, but these numbers are interesting. There are currently over 369K domain names registered in Russia and according to Coordination Centre for TLD.ru, there are over 2.6 million domains registered under the .ru top level domain (RU). In other words. we can see that the trademark holders and Russian domainers are either careful with grabbing this opportunity or skeptical of the entire enterprise. Of course this is a very early stage in the process, but if it is indicative of a trend, than at least in the case of Russia, the skeptics might have a point. Of course the situation may be different in other parts of the world and in other cultures, but Russian industry does not seem to be too excited.
Am I overanalyzing this? Am I taking these number out of context? What do you think?
Digest #24
There is a lot going on, so here is another digest. It starts with some feedback from the recent open consultations for the upcoming IGF. Then it includes links to some studies, including the recently released Berkman report on broadband policy and then to some interesting opinions about the role of content piracy in technology adoption and about the link between net neutrality and job creation. And of course, as usual, some fun stuff :)
Beware of the Skypzzz!
by Dima on July 29, 2009
in Russia, policy, technology, telecom
Rhetoric has been always a very powerful tool in promoting both policy and business agendas. Russian telcos are now putting the old-good argument of security in promoting legislation that may allow them to succeed where their European and other colleagues have failed.
It seems that all around the world the telcos feel threatened by Voice over IP (VoIP) applications that run on their infrastructure and offer free of charge voice services, with Skype being an iconic example*. Only recently, the European telecos tried to argue for unfair competition and asked to discriminate against the use of VoIP on their networks. The European Commission took a firm stand against it arguing for principles of net-neutrality also on mobile networks. In the US AT&T, together with Apple, work against VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Voice to be used on the iPhones. It will be now up to the FCC to take a stand on that issue. Finally, the Israeli leading mobile service provider, Cellecom, is also seeking ways of limiting its users’ access to VoIP and some other technologies, under the slogan of “quality of service.” The Israeli Ministry of Communication actually took a pro net neutrality stand in this case, but the argument is still going on.
In Russia, however, the local industry decided to make the long story short and instead of appealing to amorphous concepts such as “fairness” in competition or “quality of service” it turned to a more basic instinct – fear. According to this article, Russian telcos have warned the Kremlin that:
“…the foreign-made VoIP software, easily downloaded from the Internet, is a threat to national security because it is resistant to eavesdropping by Russia’s intelligence agencies.”
To make things a bit spicier, they also added some nationalism. The lobbying group was quoted saying that:
“The majority of brands operating in Russia, such as Skype and Icq, are of foreign origin and therefore we need to ensure the defense of national producers in this sector”
While some civil rights activists are concerned with the state openly talking about spying on people, others view it a bit more pragmatically. In a recent hearing on the subject it was estimated that in about 3 years 40% of voice traffic in Russia will be VoIP. This creates a significant incentive for the industry to cooperate on legislation that “will bring order” to the VoIP market. Indeed such an effort is currently underway in Russia.
There was limited, but critical reaction on this topic in the mainstream Russian media and even the blogsphere reacted only on the margines; some expressed concerns, others healthy sarcasm. I wonder though, if conversations about VoIP are going on in other countries as well, and if so, what arguments are made against and for it.
* Disclamer – I use Skype and, to the most part, like it.
