Russia – one million domain names; 30 million internet users

The one millionth .ru domain name has been register according to a report in C-News. The name, hanti.ru, was registered on 17 September, with even the exact time give – 01.02.33 Moscow time.It appears there was a huge demand for someone to register the one-millionth domain name, with the owner of hanti.ru, company called Cyberbox Ltd, putting in a lot of requests for domain names according to another report in The Moscow Times.In addition to the one million .ru names, there are also “about 10,000 .su domain names, and about 300 new ones are registered each month.”The Moscow Times goes on to say, “Little information exists about Cyberbox, the company that pushed RuNet past the million mark.”A phone number listed for Cyberbox was in Seychelles, and attempts to connect to it were unsuccessful. A message sent to company’s e-mail address was unanswered Monday.”It appears to be a company that buys up domain names to use for advertising purposes,” Andrei Vorobyov, a spokesman for Ru-Center, said.It appears Cyberbox is a cybersquatter, having registered “several thousand domain names, including Afisga.ru and Deliotte.ru, along with possible porn sites Orgazm-news.ru and Ingushgirls.ru.Curiously “Vorobyov denied that Cyberbox was a cybersquatter, instead calling it a company of ‘registration professionals.'”In another story, C-News also reports there are around 30 million internet users in Russia with 40 million internet users expected sometime in 2008.For the C-News story on the one millionth .ru domain name, see eng.cnews.ru/news/line/indexEn.shtml?2007/09/17/266299 and for The Moscow Times story see www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/09/18/003.html. For the story on 30 million Russian internet users see eng.cnews.ru/news/line/indexEn.shtml?2007/09/17/266299