Telnic's .tel Landrush is Under Way

An idea first floated in 2000 is implemented in 2009.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [February 9, 2009]

The idea is best explained by looking at this URL: justin.tel, the contact information for the communications director of London, UK-based Telnic, Justin Hayward.

Telnic is betting that individuals and organizations will want to enable users to contact them, and that those individuals and organizations will update their own contact information. Hayward lists two e-mails (one for PR), two cell phones, a voice phone number, a skype ID, and a twitter ID.

.tel URLs purchased but not yet set up at press time include hertz.tel, nypd.tel, and davos.tel.

All of this data is stored in DNS, Hayward explains. It is published on proxy pages, one optimized for PC users and the other for mobile users.

The idea was first proposed in 2000, approved on May 30, 2006, and the .tel land rush started on February 3, 2009. The land rush ends on March 23, 2009, and .tel general availability begins on March 24, 2009. During the land rush, .tel domains cost $300 per year with a three year minimum contract, and during general availability, the price drops to "standard .com pricing" of perhaps $10 or $25 per year.

Questions
Won't this overload the DNS system? "DNS was designed for this," says Hayward. "Until now, there was no use friendly way of doing it. It has taken a significant number of years to convince ICANN that this would work and that we have the right skills and policies and procedures."

Will people really take the time as Hayward has to update their information? Hayward says that the company has spent a lot of time designing a GUI to make it easy to set up your own .tel page.

What about privacy and abuse? The whois information for .tel is private and encrypted. Furthermore, telnic has ensured that the contact information can be encrypted and shared "on a one-to-one basis."

As to abuse, Hayward says it will be immediately obvious if anyone tries to post the wrong contact information for any kind of malicious reason, but that if there are problems, the .tel domain has a strict AUP. "People can flag problems to us and we can close it down or get legal entities involved," he says.

But he doesn't expect it to be a problem. "If someone visits your .tel, they're looking for contact information, and that information validates itself. You'll find out quickly whether that person is or is not who they say they are."

Will webhosts lose some customers to a .tel domain? "At the moment, .tel is set up so that the end user doesn't require any webhosting whatsoever, so initially ISPs might look at this with some concern," admits Hayward, "but there's a strong reseller model for anyone with a relationship with a registrar."

.tel offers an opportunity to ISPs, says Hayward, to package services to customers in an accessible way and to increase ARPU and the exposure of services to customers.

Obviously, VoIP services go nicely with .tel. "VoIP companies are embracing the opportunity that .tel offers," says Hayward. "For VoIP companies, the hardest thing now is exposing the services and getting people comfortable with using VoIP. They see .tel as a delivery platfom."

Once you've sold a free basic VoIP service, you can sell an upgrade, he adds, such as a CRM solution add-on.

Initially, all .tel domains will be run by Telnic, but the company is working with over 130 registrars and is certifying many of them so that they will be able to set up .tel domains and run them to Telnic's standards.

Tucows
I spoke with one of those registrars, Tucows, which runs OpenSRS. Adam Eisner is Tucows' product manager for domains.

Does the release of new domains mean the end of artificial scarcity that made certain domains so valuable? In particular, Tucows has a profitable portfolio of surnames in .com.

"I think .com and .net have a strong brand position in the marketplace," says Eisner. "The number of .coms is greater that the number of domains in the other TLDs."

The opposite question then: are there new opportunities with new TLDs? Some, such as .tel, are directed a specific purpose. "Absolutely! We have lots of TLDs and ISPs also have a wide range of markets. New TLDs could expose new markets. Let's say (hypothetically) that someone proposed a .shoes domain. ISPs would be exposed to the shoe market. I believe that there's a proposal for a .music domain."

.asia launched recently and other gTLDs could be popular, says Eisner, such as .quebec or .africa.

Eisner says he likes the way the Telnic is launching .tel and notes that Tucows has a similar (but different) service called Hover.com (press release here).

So will new domains be competing with applications or services? "It's all good for the internet," says Eisner. "Whether people use .tel or hover.com or .me, we are recognizing the fact that customers need a way to set up their identity online. VeriSign recently purchased the .name registry. .tel, .me, and .name are all indicators of a new push to help consumers connect their disparate publishing points online (like Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Flickr accounts), and establish a personal identity online using domain names."

Eisner hopes that ISPs will embrace innovation. "I said at the Parallels Summit that there are many changes afoot but too few innovations. Too many services providers look left and look right and offer what everyone else is offering."

Tucows is promoting the new domain to its resellers, says Eisner.

He expects a large number of new TLDs in the next 12 months, even though the approval process for a new TLD is expensive. "It will be interesting to see what happens," he says.

—End