How to .Tel the Difference

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.

Looking for com in a Muslim World

Walking the streets of Cairo reminds me a bit of Asian countries. Without Roman and Greek letters on signs it is nearly impossible to understand things other than familiar logos. I have no problem navigating streets in French, Spanish or other European countries but Arabic, Japanese and the like make you feel like you are truly on another planet.

While there may be .com and .eg (Egypt’s ccTLD, not a gTLD for examples) signs on the street, I haven’t seen any yet.

Of course I’ve also been wandering streets in a jet lag induced stupor. I arrived after an eight hour flight to Amsterdam and a nine hour layover in the same city. I woke up Sunday at 14:00 hours, just in time to go to the Egyptian museum on my one day off and stand in line until the museum closed. In fact, I haven’t really done anything here yet.

Today, however, marks the start of another ICANN conference and my first in eight years. I’ve got a big agenda and many things I want to accomplish this week. Fortunately, most of the signs in the hotels and airports are in English.