RU-CENTER

Type:	Private
Industry:	Registrar
Founded:	2000
Ownership:	RosBusiness Consulting
Headquarters:	Leningradsky prospekt 74 bld.4, Moscow, Russian Federation, 125315
Country:	Russia
Businesses:	RU-NIC, JSC, NIC Media LLC, Domain Names Magazine
Email:	info[at]nic.ru
Website:	NIC.ru
Blog:	RU Blog
Facebook:	RU-CENTER
Key People
Alexander Panov, CEO Andrey Vorobiev, Head of External Relations and Communications Sergey Gorbunov, Senior PR Manager for International Projects Tatiana Khramtsova, International Operations & Project Manager

RU-CENTER is Russia's leading registrar and hosting provider, as well as one of the oldest domain registrars in the country. It is the largest registrar for the .ru, .su, and .pФ domains. The company provides a full range of registration services and domain names support; in began offering the first auction services in 2007, and domain parking services in 2008. As of early 2012, the company has more than 500,000 customers and 3 million domains under management. It passed the 4 million domain mark in September, 2012.

The company is recognized as an expert on the domain name market, and publishes Domain Names Magazine, the only industry related publication in Russia. In addition, RU-CENTER created and maintains the resource Info.nic.ru, which is the most popular Russian site devoted to domain name industry news. Among the company's other information projects are a database of Russian IP addresses and a statistics website about the registration of the domain names .ru, .su, and .pф.

RU-CENTER is actively involved in the global Internet community, supporting ICANN meetings and other international events. RU-CENTER experts take part in ICANN Working Groups. RU-CENTER, joined Afternic's Premium Reseller Network in February, 2012.

History

RU-CENTER was founded in 2000, at the beginning of the formation of a distributed domain name registration in Russia. The progenitor of the RU-CENTER was the Russian Institute for Public Networks, an organization that supported the origins of Internet technologies in Russia. Today, the company supports more than 3 million domain names, and serves as the registrar for more than 30% of .ru domains, 60% of .su domains, and 60% of .pФ domains. They have an extensive partner network, with more than 6,000 partners in Russia and abroad.

From 2010 to 2011, under the New gTLD Program, RU-CENTER initiated the introduction of the domains .moscow/.москва for the needs of the Russian capital, as well as domains for the cultural and linguistic communities represented in the country (project RUCLID). The idea of creating a domain for Moscow's cultural and linguistic communities has become the first Russian start-up planned under the New gTLD Program.

In November 2010, RU-CENTER was ordered by The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) to return $8.5 million, earned through the illegal auction of .rf domains. RU-CENTER was accused of selling .rf domains without having the permission to do so, according to the laws of Russia for domain auction. In November 2011, the FAS decision was reversed by the Moscow Arbitration Court.

.moscow & .москва

In 2010, the RU-CENTER initiated the .moscow/.москва project. The CC for TLD RU proposed the project to the different government agencies in Moscow, which included the creation of a special community council to administer the domains.

Following the proposal, the Moskovskiy Komsomolets, one of the leading newspapers in Russia, launched a survey about the project on its website to gauge public opinion of the proposal. The survey was ran from September 2 until October 1, 2010. Thousands of citizens responded and supported the project. The Moscow Department of Culture and Moscow Department of Support and Development of Small and Middle Entrepreneurship (DSDSME) also supported the project and expressed their willingness to participate in creating a Community Council to handle the application for the TLDs with ICANN. The Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID) was established and took over the responsibility to manage the .moscow/москва project.

Supported TLDs

RU-CENTER is fully accredited with multiple organisations for registration of respective TLDs. These organizations and the TLDs supported by RU-CENTER are:

• Coordination Center for TLD in Russia for .ru and .pФ.
• The Foundation for Internet Development for .su.
• ICANN for .net, .com, .org, .biz, and .info.
• Verisign for .cc, .name, and .tv.
• doMEn, d.o.o. for .me.
• TelNic, Ltd. for .tel.
• dotMobi for .mobi.
• Tralliance for .travel.
• SITA for .aero.
• Afilias, Ltd. for .hn, .ag, .bz, .lc, .mn, .sc and .vc.
• RegistryPro for .pro.