Australian Startup Touts URL by Phone

Nascomms’ system uses phone numbers to identify Web sites or particular pages on Web sites, confirming ownership of each number through standard telephone directory services to avoid cybersquatting.

by David Braue of ispwatch.com.au [November 29, 2000]

The domain registration space has become dramatically more competitive this year. The pace of change will only increase with the myriad domain name possibilities presented by ICANN’s decision this month to introduce several new top-level domain names.

Hoping to cash in on the trend, Australian startup Nascomms this week began wooing ISPs to use a totally new addressing scheme that it is touting as a major step forward in Web site accessibility.

Nascomms’ system uses phone numbers to identify Web sites or particular pages on Web sites, confirming ownership of each number through standard directory services telephone enquiries to avoid the potential for cybersquatting. Anyone using a downloadable, custom extension to Internet Explorer can enter the phone number into the onscreen toolbar, from where it is sent to Nascomms’ servers and resolved into a full URL.

Phone numbers are not phoney
Phone numbers—which cost $55 to register and $27.50 per year thereafter—can point to top-level Web pages or specific areas on a Web site, a feature that general manager Siobhan Dooley says will be particularly useful for large organizations. Such organizations might use multiple phone numbers for different business units served by the same Web site.

The whole point of Nascomms’ approach, Dooley explains, is to make the Web more accessible to people who are still a bit put off by the structure of a URL but can easily find resources by tying them back to familiar phone numbers.

"If you’re used to using the Net, [URLs] are all well and good," she says, "but the majority of the population still isn’t used to using the Net, and you’ve got to consider that there are people out there who find it a bit difficult. A phone number is technology we’re already comfortable with, and makes the idea a little less difficult."

Having sold "hundreds" of registrations since it launched this week, Dooley believes the company has found a unique value proposition that she says is unmatched in the world—and may remain so, if patents she says have been pending on the technology for years are issued.

But the company still faces the decidedly uphill battle of increasing penetration of its esoteric addressing plug-in to the point where companies will decide that enough customers are using the tool to be worth registering it.

ISPs are the key
Hoping to build on ISPs’ large and established bases of customers, Nascomms is in discussions with a number of ISPs and is looking to form revenue-sharing relationships with many more who are willing to become resellers, in effect, for its product. Partnering with ISPs, Dooley hopes, will help the company quickly grow the installed base of customers using its addressing add-on, particularly if ISPs begin featuring the download on their home pages or incorporating it into the default configuration on their sign-up disks.

"The interest at the moment has been from Asia, India, and the US," says Dooley. "We’re looking for resellers and people who are interested in taking the technology and reselling it to customers they already have. ISPs including Asia Online are working with us, and we’re also in discussions with a number of other ISPs to become involved. Our main aim is not to change or manipulate the marketplace, but to work with a lot of other existing technologies to take this evolution to its next step."

—End