.tel is a top-level domain approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD launching on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 to trademark owners of national effect and on February 3, 2009 to anyone who wishes to apply. Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for "internet communication" services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the DNS. It is sponsored by Telnic Limited. In May 2006, it was approved to be added to the DNS root zone by ICANN. The TLD was added to the DNS root zone on March 2, 2007.
Since some of the sorts of services that will use .tel domains can be achieved on mobile telephones, there may be a perceived overlap in the target market between this and the .mobi domain, also approved by ICANN in the same round. However this perception is incorrect. In simple terms, .tel is about publishing contact data: phone numbers, SIP addresses and so on directly in the DNS, not on html-based websites. The focus of the .mobi domain is providing web sites and other content designed for the user interface provided on mobile phones and other hand-held devices.
A second application for the same TLD name, but with a different structure, was made by a company named Pulver. This proposal involved telephone number style numeric identifiers. Alternative viewpoints claimed that this either complemented or conflicted with ENUM. All-numeric identifiers are not available in the form of .tel that has been approved.
On July 10, 2008, EuroDNS was the first registrar to sign an agreement with Telnic to sell the .tel.
In September 2008, Telnic publicly demonstrated the applications that allowed people to access .tel domain information without going through a Web browser or the World Wide Web at DEMOfall08. Industry experts were positive to the demonstrations, with comments in blogs including author of Net Attitude and founder member of the W3C John R. Patrick stated "I think this will be a big deal."
In October 2008, Telnic launched its resource site for developers to enable them to work with the DNS records that the .tel uses (mainly NAPTR, LOC and TXT records), as well as releasing code for applications and plug-ins for the BlackBerry, Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mobile and iPhone. It was at this stage that discussion of the .tel providing the platform for the 'webless web' began, as applications could bypass the need for a browser to access information stored on the internet, whilst the .tel information could be published to the web without the need for an individual or business to build, host and maintain a website.
Also in October 2008, Telnic announced that 100 registrars had signed an agreement to distribute .tel. including organizations such as Digitrad that had become ICANN accredited purely to provide click to call technologies on the platform.
In November 2008 at ICANN Cairo, Telnic launched its trial programme VIP.tel, which enabled people to trial the .tel functionality before commercial availability.
Note: This is just for information purpose only. For original article, please visit,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.telRegards,
Ramesh
HELM, WHM, cPanel, ASP, .Net development, PHP, MySQL, MSSQL Server, SEO support forum
