Bulgaria plans to reapply for the .BG zone.

The Bulgarian Ministry of Transport and Communications announced plans to resubmit an application to register the Cyrillic .БГ extension after the launch of the new, simplified procedure for registering new national domain extensions, the "IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process." This refinement of the procedure is nearly complete, and is expected to be approved this year.

Bulgaria applied to register the IDN top-level domain .БГ on November 16, 2009. A poll was conducted on the Ministry of Transport and Communications's website to select the name. 30% of votes were cast for ".бг" over the proposed ".бг," ".българия," ".бгр," ".бул," and/or "бя."

However, ICANN prohibited the use of this name, citing potential confusion due to the spelling similarity with the Brazilian .br zone and the similarity of the letter "b" to the number six, as well as potential disruption to the stability of the DNS infrastructure. The Brazilian government supported this decision.

However, the potential administrator of this zone, Uninet, disagreed with ICANN's decision and filed a request for additional information about the reasons for the denial. In its request, Uninet requested a list of the "DNS infrastructure stability" criteria that could lead to violations. However, ICANN rejected the request, thus leaving its decision as the only one possible.

Bulgaria is awaiting the final adoption of the simplified IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, as it will then allow resubmissions. As a reminder, the application review process typically takes several weeks to two months, followed by the domain delegation process, including technical testing, which takes another two to three months. The review process costs $26,000.