Bulgaria's .bg TLD is run by a private company with no mandate from the state

In the EU there are 27 country code top level domains (ccTLDs, such as .nl, .de) plus the .eu TLD. All of these TLDs are managed either by a non-profit organization, public research institution, state-owned enterprise or government agency. With one strange exception: Bulgaria's .bg

Since 1991 the .bg domain space has been operated by a small private company based in Varna, owned by two private individuals. This company, "Digital Systems" (later "Register.BG"), was never selected by the Bulgarian state, has no contract with it, and is not mentioned by any Bulgarian law.

In December 2025 the Bulgarian Ministry of e-Government confirmed all of this in writing in response to a freedom-of-information request. Which leads us to the question: How did .bg end up like this and what can we learn from it?

Who gets to run a ccTLD was first defined in 1994 by RFC 1591. Surprisingly the original RFC does not mention governments at all, it simply calls for the trustee to be "technically competent". Only later, in the 1999 ICANN ICP-1 document, new wording was added to "take very seriously" the "desires of the government of a country".

In practice in the early 90s, ccTLDs were handed to whichever local operator was considered technically capable and asked first. This was often a university, research institution, or the major ISP of the country (which was often state-owned).

Most countries later formalised arrangements with these operators. Management of the TLD was transferred to non-profit orgs, multi-stakeholder industry associations, government agencies or public research facilities.

But in Bulgaria this never happened.

1989 - Digital Systems (Цифрови системи ООД) is incorporated in the coastal city of Varna by two private individuals. It becomes Bulgaria's first ISP, offering local email and usenet access.

1991 - In 1991 Digital Systems joins EUnet, a loose network for European internet service providers connected via early UUCP connections before widespread TCP/IP adoption. Around this time, Digital Systems starts a registry for .bg names. RIPE correspondence shows .bg being used for email since at least 1992, with MX routing through EUnet-connected hosts.

1993 - Digital Systems launches www.digsys.bg, Bulgaria's first website. The RIPE NCC's November list of European registries names Digital Systems as Bulgaria's IP registry.

1995 - IANA creates its formal delegation record for .bg on the January 3, 1995, naming Digital Systems as the manager.

1998 - Digital Systems first introduces a setup fee and annual fee for .bg domains. Other Bulgarian ISPs file a protest, calling .bg a national symbol, and send it to IANA, RIPE, the Bulgarian competition watchdog, Parliament and the President. The complaints are ultimately rejected by the Bulgarian courts and Digital Systems remained in charge of .bg.

2001 - The same two shareholders of Digital Systems incorporate the new private limited company "Register.BG" (Регистър.БГ ООД). The registry responsibilities are transferred from Digital Systems to the new firm Register.BG.

2006 - Bulgarian media reports that management of .bg is to be transferred to the "First Public Internet Registry", a new non-profit to be run by various stakeholders. The transfer depends on Register.BG voluntarily handing over control or trying to get a new court ruling.

2007 - The initiative to transfer management of .bg appears to have stalled, with Bulgarian media outlets criticising the lack of progress on the matter.

2026 - Register.BG is still in charge of .bg.

In November 2025 an anonymous citizen used Bulgaria's public-information access platform to inquire about the current state of the .bg TLD. Here is a rough translation of the original citizen request:

In their answer the Ministry of e-Government confirms that the Bulgarian state has no control over the .bg domain space:

• The ministry states explicitly that management of .bg "does not derive from a Bulgarian normative act", it derives only from the international IANA/ICANN delegation system.
• The ministry says it holds no documents relating to Register.BG's application or approval as manager of the .bg TLD
• There was no government procurement simply because this wasn't treated as a Bulgarian state contract.

In summary: For more than 30 years, .bg has been operated by a private company, with no control of the state. Not because the state ever appointed this company by law, contract or tender, but because IANA assigned it as the delegated ccTLD manager in the early 90s.

ICANN's procedures for redelegating a TLD require either the consent of the current manager or substantial misbehaviour of the current manager. It seems unlikely that Register.BG will give up control voluntarily, but there is also no proof of negligence or misconduct justifying a forced redelegation.

There are some precedent cases for this kind of situation. In 2001 the .au Australian TLD was transferred from network engineer Robert Elz, who had run it personally for many years, to auDA, an industry body the Australian government had endorsed. In 2002 Kenya's .ke was taken from an unresponsive private individual manager and reassigned to KENIC, a non-profit backed by the Kenyan government.

In both cases IANA acted because the state built a credible successor first, something that Bulgaria attempted but failed to do in 2006/2007. Until then, .bg stays the only EU country TLD in private hands.