print versionRussian Ministry of Telecom & Mass Communications announced a tender, to study the potential of "cyrillic e-mail" in .RF domain. 10 million rubles ($300.000) will be given from the federal budget for the project. Contractor will be defined in July, and will have 110 days to carry out the project, reports Marker.ru.
The research of possibilities to provide mail for the Russian Federation citizens and State government bodies in .RF domain is one of the conditions. With the help of e-mail in .RF domain, it is planned to improve relations between State government bodies and citizens, access to State service online.
Domain names are planned to be translated into Cyrilic within the period of 2-3 years, login translation into Roman will take 5 years. At the same time, the problem of "@" symbol, which is used for e-mail, stays open.
To switch layout from Russian into English just for one symbol is obviously inconvenient, Webplanet.ru mentioned that problem back in November 2009.
At this point, two case scenarios are possible: either the @ symbol will be replaced with the other symbol, or there will be reached an agreement with keyboard manufacturers to make a special key for @ symbol, that will function the same way in any layout (National Domain Coordination Center is currently negotiating on this issue).
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