The world’s largest phone book
Jinfo Blog

4th February 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

Yesterday’s press and technical blogs (http://digbig.com/4yfcx) were abuzz with news that the .tel domain had been opened up for sale to the public. Unlike other domains, .tel will not allow owners to upload and maintain web pages. Rather the new suffix will enable users to store their contact details in what could become the world’s largest virtual directory. Names, telephone numbers, postal, web and email addresses, as well as details from social networking sites can all be listed in this contact book and may be updated in an instant. See http://www.emma.tel for an example of the kind of details that may be published. To ensure a degree of privacy, data that users only want ‘friends’ to see will be accessible via a password. According to the CEO of Telnic, Kash Mahdavi, (http://www.telnic.org) , the company that runs the .tel registry, the new suffix is intended to act as a switchboard on the internet, to enable people and companies to find you at all times. Mahdavi believes that .tel will become a powerful tool for businesses, public and governmental agencies, as well as individuals, claiming that Telnic is ‘the convergence point for telecoms, the internet and directory services’. (http://digbig.com/4yfcw). As reported in the Times (http://digbig.com/4yfda), the new domains will become a valuable contact tool, since their simple web pages will be easily accessible via iPhone, Blackberrys or mobile phones. Whether individuals will want to be available to the whole world is a matter of choice, however there is no doubt that the new domain is an investment opportunity for businesses. To ensure brand protection, companies are likely to be amongst the first to pay £210 for the suffix. A small price to pay for what is essentially a way of making money out of the mobile internet. With minimal development costs, it will be possible to run chat lines or competitions on a .tel domain, include premium rate telephone numbers in contact details and provide links to e-commerce sites. Concerns over the potential for abuse were dismissed by Telnic. Since .tel names were focussed on contact information only, it would take little time to dig out the bogus entries.

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