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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."
Right where it belongs, along with
Trolling is a art,
Where's .biloxi and .tuscaloosa ?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Why not continure the 'tradition' of 3 letter TLDS and use .mob? It's even descriptive of the companies trying to push this through...
TODO: Something witty here...
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?
This is too much fun! Can I be the first to register olds.mobile? hupp.mobile? auto.mobile? alexander.calder.mobile.hangs.in.a.museum?? semi.mobile? quasi.mobile.rang.notre.dame.bells? Can the .matic domain be far behind?
Mobile devices don't need their own TLD for DNS names. Just what's wrong with with using the existing ones?
Personally I dont think there needs to be another .anything right now. what good is .mobile gonna do? rather than be the next haven for spammers, stupid vhosts, and other useless junk..
oh yeah. the last thing i need to address from my phone is a longer TLD.
rcpt to: path@sprint.mbolie^H^H^H^H^H
501 5.5.6 You're an IDIOT
CRAP!
501 5.5.7 That doesn't work either.
rcpt to: path@sprunt.mlobie^H^H^H^H
501 5.5.8 Nope. Not even close.
rcpt to: path@sprint.mobil
501 5.5.9Try Exxon
ad nauseum.
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?
This space intentionally left blank.
They don't need a .mobile domain to connect their phones and PDAs to the internet, don't they? ;-)
m ber.orgh onenumber.tv
Like it will matter, people will just continue to find unique domains and register stuff like
myphonenumber.com
myphonenumber.net
myphonenu
myphonenumber.biz
myphonenumber.cc
myp
myphonenumber.de
myphonenumber.mx
Because, what if, forbid, someone just randomly types in myphonenumber.mx, but doesn't try myphonenumber.com. Oh no!
I don't know if it is a good idea. Our company website has the .ws domain. When I give people our website address, they always ask: dot what? becasue they always expect .com or .net.
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.
Get Movie Posters
These companies need to do anything they can do to get more mobile data use out of their networks, hardware and software. Margins on voice traffic are dropping and will continue to drop, hastened by VoIP, so how to make up for lost revenue? Pretty soon a large chunk of high-margin international calling traffic will be VoIP, which basically means flat rate, which means... no more big bucks for ATT, etc. By selling new services, like wireless data the carriers can save themselves (they hope). Another problem for Nokia and friends is that handsets are starting to be manufactured in China, and Nokia will not be able to build plain old voice handsets at competitive prices, so it needs to get away from the commoditized market of voice handsets, which means it needs better entertainment abilities, which means wireless data. A TLD could really fit into that. The wireless web has great potential but consumer awareness is poor, because there aren't any good ways for consumers to identify mobile content and there aren't any easy ways for websites to produce mobile content without learning a bunch of new technologies. Well, there are some ways to do it now...
I hear the American Thumb Rehabilitation Association is the real force behind this domain name.
Great, now spammers are going to create exploits for phones and PDAs as relays for their filth. I wonder how many e-mails a zombie Pocket PC can crank out before the the user sees a $10,000 for bandwidth usage? I guess the antivirus indusry will see a nice boost in revenues for AV for Blackberrys, Palms, PocketPCs, Symbian phones, etc.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"8005551212@messaging.nextel.com" works fine for me, and I don't think we need a ".mobile" until someone shows a very good reason to make one.
1) It's a lot of letters to type. .info already did possibly)
2) http://nextel.mobile/ just looks weird as hell.
3) It will break some applications (more than
4) I don't believe that it's necessary (or even convenient for a significant number of people)
Why should a single corporate entity control an entire TLD?
.microsoft or Nokia wanted .nokia, but even then-- why waste the resources of the top-level DNS servers for something which will only serve to benefit one company?
.COM/.NET and over the DNS system in general (kof kof SITEFINDER kof kof), but now they want to start giving entire freaking TLDs over to companies wholesale?
I can 'kinda' understand if Microsoft wanted
This is absolutely disgusting. It's bad enough that Verisign/NetworkSolutions/whatever has such control over
This is bullshit!
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
As the article points out, its 45K to apply and well over 1 million to complete the process and get everything setup. But what about the individual and openness? I for one would like my own personal andrew.mobile... or maybe even andrew.myisp.mobile. After all, I have number portability now. Why not also have domain portability in regards to my wireless equipment? Wouldn't it be nice to switch providers... whether of my 3G network or my 802.11b, but keep my andrew.myisp.mobile and my phone number?
.mobile root server possibly running on Windows???
Also... not sure how many others were bothered by the presence of M$ on the committee. Don't they have enough of their toes in enough industries? Now they want to be part of the control of the TLD for the mobile space??? Add up the net-worth of all the companies involved and M$ has the most $$$ which means they have the most strongarm potential. This isn't meant as a flame war, but rather a call for each of us to submit our opinions to ICANN about the presence of M$ (who isn't really a telco-type company... but just a software company) on the committee. If M$ is going to be onboard (as a s/w company), so should Trolltech and Palm and some of the other more *open* vendors who's software are also used in mobile devices. Otherwise, all I see is yet another entity that M$ can bully its way around, not to mention the fear of the
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers
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.
... 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.
On the other hand
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
.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.
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
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing