The festival was organised by RU-CENTER, the leading Russian domain name registrar, and the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID). The event was held at the Moscow City Day Celebration and took place in the Tsaritsyno Museum and Reserve and in Troitsk, a town that has become a part of the territory of Moscow in July within the program for the city’s expansion.

During the festival residents and guests of the Russian capital were invited to participate in contests showing the variety of city top-level domains to be introduced shortly.

Applications for their own domains were filed by more than 40 cities, including those that are partners and twins for Moscow – Berlin, Paris, London, Tokyo, Madrid et al.

Russia’s capital applies for .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА – the project has been started by RU-CENTER two years ago and now is supervised by the Foundation for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development.

The domains for the capital of Russia will be implemented within the New gTLD Program that was devised by ICANN, the global corporation managing the address space of the Internet.

The FAITID representatives announced at the event that the expected term of the domains’ introduction is summer 2013. Earlier it was planned to implement the domains in the beginning of 2013, but afterwards the timeline was updated. That is because ICANN got about 2,000 applications on new top-level domains within the first round of the New gTLD Program and now it will take more time for the corporation to evaluate them than it was expected initially.

At the festival RU-CENTER and FAITID staff also told Muscovites and guests of the city that .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА names will be available to individuals and legal entities from all over the world. The cost of the domains’ registration and renewal will be similar to the fees that are currently effective for .RU domain names.

“.MOSCOW and .МОСКВА will be really popular only in case they are used,” says Dmitry Burkov, Chairman of the FAITID Board. “To achieve this goal the domains should be well-known among Internet users, those who visit websites about Moscow and looks for the relevant content on the Internet. And for this purpose events like the festival are very efficient, they allow us to present .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА to end users. What is also important – we do these events beforehand. We would like to make the domains pretty well-known to users to the moment when they are introduced.”