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ICANN Considers New Domain Name to Enable Contact Information Management
TMCnet Contributing Editor
How many numbers do you have to remember on any given day? Aside from your best friend’s home number, there is also their cell phone, their work phone and extension and not to mention their email address or instant messaging handles. Sure, most of this information can be kept in address books, both paper and electronic, but not all of these devices are interchangeable.
One company believes they may have the answer to the dilemma of remembering all this information. Telnic Ltd. has proposed the “.tel” domain name and has already received approval to enter negotiations with ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers. Launch of the domain name is anticipated to be the end of 2006.
Telnic has proposed the “.tel” domain to make contact information easier to use. The concept is similar to that of the WHOIS database except that in the “.tel” instance, users will be able to display any contact information they chose as well as update it whenever needed.
As proposed, a “.tel” Web site could also enable friends to initiate a call or send a text message directly from the site. Business users could take advantage of the “.tel” site to determine a customer’s location and route them automatically to the correct call center.
A “.tel” Web site could also serve as a central location that various people-finding services on the Internet could gather the most recent contact information as individuals migrate. This would provide real-time information compared to the traditional method of pulling data from third-party sources such as phone listings that can be old or incomplete.
Telnic executives anticipate that future telephony applications and devices could make use of such data, particularly with the convergence of wireless and wireline networks. The creation of the “.tel” domain would be mainly to provide a location which consumers would know to go and find contact information as there is nothing innate in “.tel” that would enable any of the aforementioned features.
The idea of the “.tel” domain does have its critics. Some argue that there may be very little need for “.tel” when companies already use “.com” to host services that assist in the management of contacts. The creation of the new domain may only provide another identifier that must be remembered instead of replacing others.
Telnic has declined to explain how all of this would work. The company also did not disclose in its application how much the domain name would cost.
ICANN has been busy in recent years, approving such domain names as “.eu” for the European Union, “.jobs” for human resources sites and “.mobi” for the targeting of mobile services. To date, 264 domains exist. The organization is also currently in negotiations for the creation of an “.xxx” for porn sites, “.asia” for the Asia-Pacific community and “.post” for postal services.
While negotiations are in progress for the final approval of this domain name, it is still unclear how much demand the domain can create. The popularity of the “.com” remains consistent and consumers may not view the “.tel” option as anything more than another alternative to manage their information – not necessarily the only option as Telnic executives may hope.
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