How to .Tel the Difference
November 4, 2008 by Rick Latona
One of the more interesting companies I’ve talked to during this ICANN meeting has been Telnic. On December 3rd they will start their sunrise registration of .tel domains. There are a few notable and fascinating things about this extension worth discussing.
The domains won’t be used for websites, per se. You won’t actually be using A records, C-Name records or MX records. You won’t have a hosting company. There will be no FTPing or html pages of any sort.
It’s always when you think you know a thing or two that someone turns everything upside down on you. While even rookie domainers quickly learn what A, C-name and MX records are, even the most savvy of us have never heard of NAPTR records. From what I understand, they are DNS records that can contain phone numbers, email address, links or other communication services.
In other words, they are using the central name servers to propogate out to the world’s DNS servers all of the content that any .Tel will display. If you visit hotels.tel you will be pulling the content from a name server near you, not from a hosting company.
Their goal appears to be to become the yellow and white pages of the 21st century. Besides business opportunities for people that want to setup and sell listings for hotels.tel or taxis.tel, they hope that companies will jump on board with names like microsoft.tel and post all of their contact information. As an individual you could put up your contact information along with links to your Facebook and/or linkedin.com profiles.
The jury, as they say, is out on this point. I think its important to distinguish .Tel from .mobi domains. The purpose of .mobi domains is to point to properly formatted mobile websites while the purpose of .Tel domains is to point to contact information and keyword for individuals and businesses and all information is immediately clickable for a “click-to-call” feature.
The technical aspects of how they are pulling this off, however, is nothing less than astounding. Someone may come up with very clever ways of monetizing a service like this if they think way outside the box like Telnic has.
They are not auctioning off premium names and will not be running a lottery system. When they start their landrush they want it to be a free-for-all. Those who snag the obvious premium names like hotels, taxis and common first and last names will certainly have sellable names on the aftermarket.
I agree on your point that the .tel will be particular be useful more of as a business listing of some sort. Right now, I’m waiting on how it will turn out on search engine results.
I’ve requested my own vip.tel trial to get the full experience of .tel this early. Although they’d admit that most functionalities are not available yet. I think the .tel has a great chance of turning out bigger than what it is right now. Below is my vip.tel URL:
http://jamarie.vip.tel
Ruel, they are assuring me that their sites are being indexed by Google. Remember that Google is also ICANN accredited so they have access to all of that information in the zone files.
or you can wait for .tele or .telecom or .nytele or .usatele .eutele or .teleteletele
next thing you know everyone will be register domain extensions
Rick,
When and where are these going to be sold?
Thank you.
Olivia
Olivia, full details for Sunrise, Landrush, and General Availability registrations for telnic (including timing, eligibility, minimum term, selection method, and validation) can be found here: http://www.telnic.org/launch-landing.html.
1. Why can’t I just use a Contact Me page for this?
2. Why would I want all my contact information in Google?
Hello,
Spoke with Justin from Telnic, very helpful in setting up a VIP account. Check out
http://victor.vip.tel
I’m bullish on this new extension.
cant use for as website?
@Rob think about the mobile experience - check your bill when you download html-based sites as opposed to downloading data from a .tel - less than 1k. A big difference when you’re on roaming data or non-fixed mobile contract
Also, you can fuel your contacts page with a .tel - check out http://telnic.org/contact.html to see how.
Justin@Telnic
tel may has good future after 2009, better book and buy few now
IMHO, its a new version of Yellow Pages hence, it will be a success. Lets see what happened after mid 2009…