Two-month sunrise registration period for .tel, a new top-level domain that comes with a turn-key website for publishing contact information, begins December 3, 2008. .tel domains are of interest because they are optimized for use by small-screen mobile devices so as to permit visitors to contact the owner by e-mail, telephone, VoIP, or any other method specified by the owner.
Unlike conventional top-level domains, .tel does not allow the owner to host a website. Instead, owners are granted acccess to a management console enabling them to store information directly in the DNS. Instead of resolving to a website, .tel would resolve to an interactive listing of owner's contact information, which may include unlimited telephone and fax numbers, physical and e-mail addresses, screen names, links to other websites, and search keywords, allowing visitors to contact the owner with a click of a button.
Given the myriad of top-level domains already in existence, brand owners are drifting away from blanket must-own-every-TLD-in-existence acquisition policies, focusing on the standard set of .com, .net and .org complemented by the country-code top-level domains in the countries they do business. Dismissing .tel as the like of .info, .name or .pro likely to fall into obscurity may be a mistake, however. The new platform offers brand owners a turn-key website optimized for mobile devices, providing yet another way of reaching out to customers.
Vol. 53, June 2010