The  Coordination Center for TLD RU held a press conference on November 14,2011 to celebrate .РФ first aniversary.

You can read the announcement after the jump:

“On 14 November 2011, at the ITAR-TASS press center the Coordination Center for TLD RU held a press conference “Domain .РФ – a year in the open access” dedicated to the 1st anniversary of the launch of the new Cyrillic domain .РФ.

Andrey Kolesnikov, the CC’s CEO, opened the press conference. He gave an update on what happened to domain .РФ during the year. “The number of domain names registered in zone .РФ is close to one million and as of today amounts to 925,803 ones, – noted Andrey Kolesnikov. – The launch of the open registration of IDN TLD .РФ made history with 207,648 domain names registered on the first day and 61.7% of them already extended. More than a third of domain names are actively used. Interestingly, on average domain names in domain .РФ are longer than in the domain .RU, which is not surprising – even a long Cyrillic name of a site is much easier to remember.”

Marina Nikerova, the CC’s Council Chairperson, presented the CC’s forecast on the way the Cyrillic Internet space will be expanding. “Our projections for next year are moderate and we foresee some 12% growth. This is to say, the domain .РФ will make it for the 1,000,000 milestone by the end of next year.”  Andrey Kondakov, the Registrars’ Committee Chairman, and the Head of the ad-hock group on preparation of recommendations on amendments to the Terms and conditions of domain names registration in domains .RU and .РФ added that “I believe that the amendments introduced in the Terms and conditions of domain names registration of the two national domains will also propel the dynamic of their expansion.”

Alexander Panov, managing partner, hosting Community, highlighted that, “Late into last November, about 7% of domains in zone .РФ hosted unique sites. Today, their number is about 25-27%. This suggests that domain .РФ kicked up the crystalization of its own audience; the Cyrillic domain is becoming an independent segment of the market. However, there are impediments to the zone’s expansion: these are technical issues related to electronic mail, for one, which we estimate is going to take all IDN domains 2-3 years to resolve within. But apart for that, domain .РФ has begun to live on its own and function independently of the domain .RU.”

Alexey Korolyuk, General Director of registrar REG.RU, tried to find out what people really do with domains in zone .РФ: “We conducted a user survey asking them how they were going to utilize their domains in zone .РФ. As many as 21% of them referred to the task of “resolving their corporate needs”, while another 23% purchased domain names for personal use. Today, 35% of users already actively use Cyrillic domains and do not key in a site name in Latin if there is a Cyrillic analogue. I believe that domain .РФ will be rapidly growing and becoming increasingly popular.”