New Domain Zone ‘spb.rf’ Registered in Russia
At SPIEF 2024 RU-CENTER, the largest corporate registrar, and the Roscongress Foundation announced launching open registration of names within the ‘spb.rf’, a new national Russian domain zone.
On 6 June at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, RU-CENTER announced the launch of domain name sales in the ‘spb.rf’ zone. In honour of the opening of the new domain zone, RU-CENTER presented the first domains to St. Petersburg and the Roscongress Foundation: ‘city.spb.rf’ and ‘forum.spb.rf’ as well.
“The Roscongress Foundation has a lot to do with St. Petersburg. The Foundation's history began here, as the organizer of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and its website is still in the ‘.spb.ru’ domain zone. Today, the geography of our events is much wider, but St Petersburg is still a key point on the event map of the Roscongress Foundation. We are grateful for the honour of receiving one of the first names in the Cyrillic domain zone of St. Petersburg and wish it to be filled with new successful websites,” said Alexander Stuglev, Chairman and CEO of the Roscongress Foundation.
The new Russian Cyrillic domain zone ‘spb.rf’ has become the second Russian regional zone in Russian after ‘.moscow’ one. The ‘.rf’ zone was created in 2010 and became the first Cyrillic domain zone in the world. The popularity of the ‘.rf’ zone today continues to grow actively due to the current trend of Russification of brands, a large number of free names and ease of use for Russian users. In total, more than 750 thousand domains are available in the ‘.rf’ domain zone today.
“The opening of a Cyrillic domain zone for St. Petersburg is an expected and significant event. The existing Latin zone of the region ‘spb.ru’ is popular and currently counts over 20 thousand domains. The appearance of the zone in the native language opens up new opportunities for selecting beautiful Internet addresses for local businesses,” says Andrey Kuzmichev, CEO of RU-CENTER and President of FAITID. He added that the cost of domains in the new zone will start from 189 roubles.
RU-CENTER is the official registrar of the ‘spb.rf’ domain zone. The Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID) is responsible for the technical launch of the zone. Today in the Russian Federation, in addition to the national zone ‘.ru/.rf’ there are two top-level zones in Latin script: ‘.tatar’ and ‘.moscow’ plus 17 second-level region zones in Latin script (domains like ‘.region.ru’) and only three zones in Cyrillic script: first is ‘.moskva’, second is ‘.rus’ and ‘.children’ is the third.
