New Net Battle Over ".mobile" Looming

John IPsen writes "A group of big companies, including Nokia, Vodafone and Microsoft, today applied to ICANN to have a new ".mobile" domain in the next round of new Internet domains for connecting phones and PDAs to the Internet. But while they say they aren't aware of any competition, it seems that some others have been preparing their bids for a lot longer and a big battle may be brewing. More here."

Comments

too long a name

[mgs1000]

Am I the only one who thinks a 5-digit TLD is just too long to type in using the keypad on a cell phone?

Uhm... no...

[LostCluster]

Mobile devices don't need their own TLD for DNS names. Just what's wrong with with using the existing ones?

Re:.mob?

[Lawbeefaroni]

And it's a hell of a lot easier to type in on cell phones.

Verbosity?

[avalys]

Is there something wrong with .mbl? I don't see why we have to spell the whole thing out: the existing TLDs are all blissfully concise.

Long TLDS distract from the domain names themselves: which looks better, www.slashdot.org or www.slashdot.nonprofitorganization?

Not your ordinary TLD

[pbug]

According to the article this namesapce is strictly for mobile devices. The actual TLD has not decided yet. This is going to be a namespace for your mobile number for instance bob.jones.cingular.mobile will be your mobile phone or wifi address. Well let us see how this one plays out.

Six letter TLDs?

[thedillybar]

This is very annoying and not neccessary.

"8005551212@messaging.nextel.com" works fine for me, and I don't think we need a ".mobile" until someone shows a very good reason to make one.

1) It's a lot of letters to type.
2) http://nextel.mobile/ just looks weird as hell.
3) It will break some applications (more than .info already did possibly)
4) I don't believe that it's necessary (or even convenient for a significant number of people)

This is fucking ridiculous.

[JessLeah]

Why should a single corporate entity control an entire TLD?

I can 'kinda' understand if Microsoft wanted .microsoft or Nokia wanted .nokia, but even then-- why waste the resources of the top-level DNS servers for something which will only serve to benefit one company?

This is absolutely disgusting. It's bad enough that Verisign/NetworkSolutions/whatever has such control over .COM/.NET and over the DNS system in general (kof kof SITEFINDER kof kof), but now they want to start giving entire freaking TLDs over to companies wholesale?

This is bullshit!

Phone numbers already are globally unique

[yelvington]

Phone numbers already are globally unique, so there is no need to have second-level domain names within a mobile TLD. Having carriers or hardware makers involved is only counterproductive. We don't need any more vendor lock-in opportunities.

On the other hand ... globally available free access to MY cellphone for the purpose of delivering messages sounds like an open door for yet more spam. Phonenumber.mbl is just too easy.

Re:.mob?

[dietz]

I think the point of this is that you wouldn't NEED to type the TLD. They want to make this TLD the default search domain on mobile devices.

So, for example, http://google/ would take you to google.mobile on a cell phone.

That's the impression I got from the article, anyway:
The application could turn out to be more politically charged than its proponents hope, because the mobile domain is not just another Internet domain like .biz, extending the address space. Instead, it is a new text-based user friendly addressing scheme for phones and mobile devices, which could replace and extend the power of phone numbers - just as the current Internet domain scheme did for numeric Internet addresses, replacing 207.46.245.214 with "microsoft.com", for instance.

Saddest line of the entire article

[JoeShmoe]

ICANN charges a non-refundable $45,000 for an application, and the total cost of developing a proper bid is reckoned to run into millions

What better way to foster innovation and good ideas than to make sure the barrier to entry is so unbelievably high that even three of the largest corporations on the planet --combined-- are thought to have "barely" a chance at floating a few new letters through cyberspace?

There's articifical scarcity, then there is intellegence scarcity. Five years after ICANN's creation, we still have (for all intents and purposes) no new TLDs. How many meetings in Hawaii and Barbados has that taken?

If Microsoft wants .mobile, guess what, they can add it to Internet Explorer and the new TLD will exist literally overnight. I'd actually be in favor of this horrible break of standards because it would teach everyone a valuable lesson that these precious root servers are modern feudalism and we serfs should wise up and go form our own government and let the 14 non-elected lords go out and dig up their own turnips.

-JoeShmoe
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