Celebrating the anniversary: the .BEL domain is 10 years old!

Exactly 10 years ago, on February 12, 2015 , the .БЕЛ domain was delegated to the Republic of Belarus. Its appearance is the result of the initiative and great work of an independent regulator in the field of information and communication technologies and Belarusian innovative providers, who raised the issue of creating a country Cyrillic domain. The proposal to create an IDN ccTLD was also supported by the majority of the national Internet community, as evidenced by archival documents of that period.

«It was a very difficult job related to choosing the name of the national domain, justifying its introduction, confirming the technical and regulatory requirements of ICANN and the subsequent launch. It was accompanied by a large number of documents and negotiations, organizational and technical events,» – brings up Sergey Prokopov, Deputy General Director for Information Technology at beCloud. «In the domain world, the shorter the domain name, the more valuable it is. “.РБ” would have been more valuable, but after studying international standards and communicating with experts from the toponymic commission under the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus, a decision was made in favor of the three-letter combination .БЕЛ».

The chronicle of that time reports on the development of events:

• The decision to create the .БЕЛ domain was made at a meeting of the Council of the independent regulator in the field of information and communication technologies on March 27, 2014.
• The ICANN organization approved Belarus's application for delegation of a top-level domain with support for national language alphabets on August 26, 2014.
• The .БЕЛ domain was delegated to the Republic of Belarus on February 12, 2015.
• Priority registration of domains for certain categories of organizations and copyright holders began from March 1 to June 1, 2015.
• From June 2 to September 30, 2015, premium domains and domains on request could be purchased in the .БЕЛ zone through charity auctions.
• Free registration was opened for everyone from October 1, 2015.

The .БЕЛ domain was created during the period of the growing trend of assigning domains in national languages around the world, which created the opportunity to use network resources in one's native language. In addition, it opened up a new pool of short and memorable names and was intended to promote greater Internet penetration in Belarus in the interests of socio-economic development. Owners of Internet resources targeting the domestic audience had special expectations from the appearance of Cyrillic domains.

«The Cyrillic domain is easier to perceive for our population, who speak two national languages. In addition, in the .БЕЛ domain zone, you can create names both in Russian and in the Belarusian language with its "i", "ў" and apostrophes. They can be even more unique and valuable, as they allow you to use letters that are not available for Latin domains. In general, more choice is a market story, a story about convenience, about a more suitable target solution for yourself and your audience,» – commented Oleg Sedelnik, CEO of beCloud.

Over the 10 years of operation of the .БЕЛ domain zone, 15,001 second-level domains have been registered - a beautiful number with a one in the new thousand, giving great hope for growth.

More than 80% of domain names are registered in Minsk and the Minsk region. The owners of registered domains are not only Belarusian organizations and citizens, but also non-residents of the Republic of Belarus from 34 countries. The TOP-3 include Russia, Germany, and the USA.

The shortest domains in the .БЕЛ zone are two-character, according to the results of 2024, there are 172 of them. The longest are domains consisting of 48 character symbols: grodno-oblast-upravlenie-zdravokhraneniya.bel and novoelnyansky-poselkovy-ispolnitelny-komitet.bel.

In 2024, 1 875 domains were registered in the .БЕЛ domain zone, 3 708 domains were excluded from the database. The largest number of registrations occurred in November – 191. As a result of charity auctions, which beCloud conducts as the technical administrator of the national domain zone, 28 domains received a second life.

Domains in the .BEL zone are actively used by the public sector of the Republic of Belarus to host their official information resources, interact with the population and implement improvements in many areas of life. For example, the following websites will be important and useful: обращение.бел., 115.бел., хваля.бел.

Large Belarusian manufacturers and small businesses focused on local markets actively register domains. And such Belarusian domains as спадчына.бел, гордимся.бел and моябеларусь.бел are our pride and a real treasure of the Belarusian Internet, preserving the national language and popularizing our native country.

Happy 10th anniversary, happy anniversary, our .BEL domain!