New use for new top level domain

A NEAT twist to promoting a new Internet top level domain (TLD) has been developed by Telnic which aims to position dot tel (.tel) as a replacement for traditional directory enquiry services like 118.

The key feature here is that the whole .tel ethos is to promote ease of use for mobile phone users. Dot tel is mobile friendly and the concept just might catch on.

What Telnic hopes everybody will do, of course, is buy a new domain name rather than bothering with a 118 style service or Yellow Pages.

In effect, instead of paying for traditional advertising or business cards, Telnic is praying both businesses and consumers will fork out for a unique .tel address which will act like an online calling card.

A typical .tel user would create an online 'profile' which would contain all of the business or personal information anybody would want.

This data would range from mobile phone and landline telephone numbers to email and IM addresses or Skype nicknames. All you have to do is know a person's or business' .tel domain name and you can find all the necessary enquiry information in one place.

And 'place' is the key feature here because users will also supposedly be able to add a location to their online data.

The INQ tried out Telnic's beta service and while there were holes in the 'profile' creation service, location seemed to be the thorniest problem to resolve.

Despite out best efforts, the INQ couldn't see how to get the dot tel service to point to an exact location rather than just a general area. Worse still, it was difficult to see how users could feed a location into an online service such as Google Maps.

Or, more crucially, given that this is a mobile friendly service, to get the location information to reference a mobile service such as Nokia's Ovi - which has a specific 'Maps' section.

Telnic is trying to push the directory enquiry replacement angle with a raft of UK based research. It found, for example, that 30 per cent of people do not have their own number committed to memory.

The INQ doesn't really buy this theory because you'll still need some kind of .tel search facility to find the URL you actually need.

Anyway, he good news is that .tel URLs do work. Point a mobile phone at one and it should be really easy to trigger a handset's internal app to take advantage of the info.

A decent browser will identify telephone numbers and enable the handset to dial them or identify an email address that opens the handset's default email package.

Today - February 3rd - marks the start of the dot tel 'Landrush' where individuals or businesses can pay a premium for a particular URL. It won't be until March 24th 2009 that prices for a dot tel domain name come down to reasonable levels.

Which is kind of defeating the objective. If you've already lost the most obvious .tel URL, why would you bother to pay for a more obscure one? µ