New .tel Domain Aims to be 'Phonebook for the Net'

Feb. 3, 2009— -- You might think that the last thing the internet needs is another top-level domain. Website owners can already choose between more than 200 possible endings for their internet addresses, ranging from the familiar .com to the exotic .xn-zckzah. But starting today, anyone in the world will be able to buy a domain ending in .tel – and the company selling them is convinced they will help to make the internet easier to navigate, not less.

Telnic, the UK firm that invented the .tel domain, says it will offer a kind of "phone book for the internet". The owners of .tel domains will not be able to upload and maintain web pages, as they can for other top-level domains (TLDs) – they will only be able to store contact details such as names, telephone numbers, web and email addresses. A demonstration profile at emma.tel offers a taste of what .tel offers. Visitors are presented with details including Emma's full name, street address, email address, Skype details and location. All those details can be updated instantly at any time.

Subdomains of a single .tel domain can be used to maintain separate profiles: for example, the demonstration site for Henri Asseily maintains separate profiles for his gaming and social activities. And users can make some of their information private, granting access only to people that they have given "friend" status.

Trademark owners have been able to register their protected names as .tel addresses for $399 since December 2008. But from tomorrow, anyone will be free to register any .tel address at a premium price of around $375 for three years. From 23 March the price will drop to around $20 for a year's registration.

Will .tel catch on? Many other top-level domains have struggled to establish themselves with web users. But Thomas Herbert, UK product manager for multinational domain hosting firm Hostway, which intends to sell .tel domains, notes that "this is the first TLD to be so specific in terms of what it does" – which might help it to stand out from the crowd.