April 4, 2012 Dmitry Burkov, Chairman of Board of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development, took part in the Sphere of Interests show on RBC TV channel. The main subject of the show became the ICANN New gTLD Program. The leading experts together with viewers discussed opportunities that New gTLD will bring for the development of business and society.  

“New gTLDs will extend the market. .COM has the biggest number of domain names, about 100 million,” said Dmitry Burkov. “That is why VeriSign, managing .COM, is the world's dominant monopolist. But new domains will bring new opportunities”.

Sergey Plugotarenko, the Director of Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC), who also participated in the Sphere of Interests show, spoke about the mini-study on the interest to New gTLD Program in RAEC. He thinks that new top-level extensions are an interesting experiment with lots of advantages, particularly for brands that will be able to protect their trademarks on the Internet and create their own unique space.
 
Dmitry Burkov gave an example of new top-level domains. .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА TLDs, supported by the Government of Russian capital, are not just branding of the city but the creation of an urban information space. “It will be a structured space that will bring the new opportunities to the citizens and business in our city,” noted Burkov. “The project will also cover the needs of the city government and urban communities. Priority will be given to the citizens of Moscow and business, located in Moscow. However, .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА domains will be available for everyone – there are another cities in the world under the name of Moscow, there are foreign companies, connected to the business relationships with Moscow, that would like to identify themselves with this space.”

All the experts of the show agreed that such global business centres like Moscow, New York, London or Berlin need their own top-level domains that would be like an entry to these cities.

Full version of the Sphere of Interests show is available on the RBC TV website.