December 4, 2008

New .tel domains are launched

by Brian Turner

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New .tel domains are now available for registration by trademark owners, with the aim of providing a single contact address point for companies.

A land grab will open to the public on February 3rd next year - though at a premium, with .tel domains then available at “normal” price from March 24th next year.

However, as yet, Telnic won’t be drawn into revealing the pricing for .tel domains, other than stating that charges will be “comparable” to existing domains.

Which isn’t very helpful, as pricing can very extraordinarily between registrars and UK domain pricing can vary between £5.98 for a .co.uk domain for two years, to £59.98 for a .uk.com for the same period from 123-reg.co.uk.

It also remains to be seen whether there will be any real positive response to the .tel domain, which in offering itself as a contact point for communications doesn’t really seem to be offering any real value to a company’s online presence.

It remains a fact that .com domains still carry the strongest branding worldwide, with .co.uk domains as the strongest UK domain - and that attempts to bring in other domain name extensions have floundered, with .info and .mobi domains practically worthless for branding purposes.

However, now that ICANN are relaxing the rules on extensions, you can be sure we’re going to see a flood of different options over the next few years - though no one has really asked if there’s any actual need to offer these.

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Story link: New .tel domains are launched

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