Is It Time For .tel?

Vitaly Friedman writes "ICANN, the body responsible for creating top-level domains, is considering a new one. Conceived as a way to easily manage contact information in an age where many people have numerous contact numbers, the proposed .tel TLD would allow individuals and companies to keep all of their contact information in an easily accessible location. Companies would get companyname.tel while individuals would be able to register firstnamelastname.tel." This idea has been kicked around for quite a while; one of the question is the whole name-space collision issue. For instance, there's me and then there's other me. Lemme tell how strange it is getting fan mail for country music stars.

Comments

All contact info in one place - FOR TELEMARKETERS

[wowbagger]

Yes, so I can have FirstnameLastname.tel, with my telephone number, so the telemarketing scum can associate my name with my number and bother me.

Yes, that sounds like a GREAT idea - I think I'll also put my social security number, my alarm codes, a Google maps link to my house, a picture of my house key, and my bank account numbers up there as well.

Look, if my company wants to set up a contact page they can set up a web page under their already existing domain name. If I want a contact page, I can set it up under my already existing personal web space. What does a new TLD add to this?

Now, *IF* they were talking about a new transport class (like http:// and ftp://) for encapsulating telephone numbers, such that a link to tel://8675309 would get me Jenny on the line, that *might* be useful.

But hell - I haven't even signed up for MYCALL@arrl.net to avoid being spammed by any asshole who scrapes my callsign (and I already have this one jackass who has done exactly that - he scraped my callsign and now he keeps adding me to stupid services like plaxo and the like, even though I've told this tool quite sharply that I don't want him bothering me.)

Re:Intended purposes

[Haeleth]

Thankfully, we in the UK have a relatively sensible system of second level domains. .net.uk, for example, is ISPs only.

Yes, but that doesn't stop plenty of people in the UK, like me, (ab)using the global .net TLD for personal sites.

And why not? I'm no more a "com"pany or an "org"anisation than I am a "net"work provider. I'm not a "biz"ness, and I'm not dedicated to providing "info"rmation, and the domain is not my real "name". But nor do I want a country-specific domain -- my site is of very limited interest to the vast majority of people, but the tiny community it interests is spread right across the globe. My site isn't aimed particularly at people in the UK, so why should it have a misleading .uk on the end?

What it comes down to is, there is no point whatsoever in trying to force an artificial hierarchy onto something like the internet, which is an interconnected network, not a neat and nicely categorised tree. It doesn't work. It's pointless and confusing. Let's just give it up already, okay?