.tel Coming Soon

GeorgeK writes "ICANN hasn't posted it on their website yet, but according to one of their board members, the .tel top-level domain was approved." notellmo.tel is going to be one of the first domains sold.

Comments

Dibs!

[phantom_programmer]

I want dontaskdont.tel.

Re:Dibs!

[cd_serek]

And if your name is Norman, why not try "batesmo.tel"

Evil domain to register...

[inflex]

Win.tel :-)

Wonder who's going to buy me out.

what's wrong with tel://

[OsirisX11]

How is this different or better?
Why is the sponsor of .tel the one who gets to make all the rules for it?
This seems highly undemocratic and arbitrarily in favor of a corporation.

Bitches.

sex.tel

[qualico]

yep, another party line.

notellmo.tel?

[jemfinch]

Forget notellmo.tel. in.tel is going to be the first domain sold.

Jeremy

Purpose?

[SkiifGeek]

Is this designed just to be another money maker, or is it actually designed to be useful?

With the .xxx TLD, the consensus seemed to be that the .com TLD would still reign supreme, but the only real use would be a complete TLD for filtering companies to block. It seems like this might be headed the same way.

Surely domain squatters will soon rush the registrar with registration of names suggested like win.tel, mo.tel, nor.tel, and so on, which would really defeat the purpose of a specialised .tel TLD if they could be registered.

Enough suggestions al'eady!

[nmoog]

All of the hilarious domains are substantially less funny when you pronounce the dot. win dot tel? I dont geddit?

Re:Enough suggestions al'eady!

[cujo_1111]

Same thing happens to /. when you tell someone to have a look...

Person 1: 'Go to slashdot dot org'
Person 2: 'Is that one dot or two?'
P1: 'Just one dot'
P2: 'Ok then. Wait a sec, slash dot org doesn't work...'
P1: 'No, it is slashdot dot org, not slash dot org'
P2: 'I'll try again. Nope slash dot dot org doesn't work either.'
P1: Head explodes

First sugar hill gang post...

[3.5 stripes]

hotelmo.tel holiday inn, and if you keep on acting up, I'll just fuck your friend..

ok, doesn't work.

Abolish TLDs

[k98sven]

Another TLD.. Who-hoo.

Isn't it time they get rid of them instead? They don't have any meaning anymore. They just create a hassle when you have to remember if that site was '.org' or '.net' or '.com' or whatever.

And this in turn does nothing but generate business for domain-squatters anyway.

The internet is too big nowadays for tacking-on a TLD to provide unique identification. And 'solving' that by creating more TLDs only aggrevates the problem.

And de facto most people are using Google or some other search engine anyway. Guessing at the domain name just doesn't work as well as it once did.

Re:Abolish TLDs

[pe1chl]

I fully agree. Everyone should be able to register immediately at the top level. Why type "google.com" when "google" is sufficient?

Hierarchical domain names were once invented to structure things, and to avoid name clashes by subdividing the namespace and allow the same name to be registered in different TLDs.
But there has not been enough active management of the namespace in the early days (providing TLDs as required by increasing name registration demand), and also the market has shown that it does not understand the mechanism. Instead of registering under an appropriate TLD, it has become commonplace to register in as many places as possible.

As the entire mechanism has already been defeated, why bother to make minor changes now it is much too late?

Re:Abolish TLDs

[1u3hr]

Isn't it time they get rid of them instead? They don't have any meaning anymore.

Not quite. I think the CCTLDs are necessary and useful. Also .gov and .gov.cctld. Maybe edu. The rest by the lack of enforcement of any conditions have just become a scam to deceive surfers and fleece companies by forcing them to pay or be squatted by a look-alike or worse. No porn site is going to exclusively use .xxx, no telephone company is exclusively going to use .tel.

Re:Abolish TLDs

[Mr Smidge]

The old .com and .net suffix were put there for a reason, and things could still possibly be put right.

If there were no TLDs, and you registered "prestige", as your own domain name, then it could easily conflict with any number of other people who have legitimate uses for that name:
* Companies in your country called "prestige".
* Anyone in another country wanting the name "prestige" - perhaps it has a different meaning in another country's tongue?
* Companies in other countries.

I think there's definitely a need to separate:
* Domain names in different countries/continents.
* Commercial domains.
* Official government bodies of countries/regions.
* Non-profit organisations, and personal-use domains.

You see, the original system wasn't so bad after all. I think it is just a lack of regulation when registering for domains that has ruined things. And everybody's guilty - I mean, look at me: I own a .net domain name and I'm not an ISP.

However, I don't think there's any easy way to kick things back into shape now. But if it had been done properly to begin with, things would be ok.

If I had my way, the only top-level domains would be .int (international), .eu/.asia/.. (continents), and country codes. No top-level .com or .org addresses. Also, the US isn't special - why should .gov, .edu etc. represent US institutions?

Take a look at these:
prestige.co.us - clearly a company called 'prestige' in the US.
foobar.edu.fr - The 'foobar' educational facility in France.
trade.gov.tv - The trade department of the Tuvalu government (a bit random, but you see my point).

I really do think that these extra TLDs detract from the point of it all. Telcoms are just companies; they don't need their own TLD. I was never even fully convinced about the need for a .net TLD either.

Is there any hope of enforcing a bit more regulation to get things into a sensible state?

Re:price according to real cost: any chance ?

[Jason1729]

Try here for free domains on the .eu.org second level domain.

You're never going to get a second level for free because ICANN takes a $6 cut from each one, but there are countless domain name owners who offer free or cheap subdomains.

Political statement in what it does NOT do

[hta]

If ICANN has accepted this request, it is a very subtle political statement. Check out section 15.1.1 of the application - "Avoiding established addressing systems and regulations" - it promises NOT to try to put phone numbers in the .tel domain.
Other .tel proposals have suggested exactly that, and this has had ITU in a tizzy.
By registering this utterly useless .tel TLD, ICANN is making a statement that it will not create TLDs that say up front that they're out to upset the ITU national regulators' club and its telephone numbers fun-and-games.
I'm neither surprised nor unhappy. .tel as described is utterly useless, but the other proposed usages of .tel had a potential to cause damage in addition to being useless.

Baseball Legend

[jeepliberty]

For the old time baseball fans: mickey.man.tel. The site admin is Babe Root.