With one month to go until Sunrise opens, trademark
owners were today warned that they risk missing out on being listed in the new
global, ‘live’ contacts directory if they fail take advantage of the first
come, first served application period for their branded .tel domains.
Many trademark owners, including international managed office space
organization eOffice (http://www.eoffice.net), are already working with their
ICANN-accredited registrars to secure their .tel domains to be at the front of
the application queue. Pier Paolo Muchelli, Founder and CEO of eOffice, said:
“We’re really excited about the prospects for .tel due to the ease of use and
global reach that it will afford us to market our businesses simply and
quickly to customers, especially on mobile devices. We’ll be looking at the
.tel to provide our customers with our global locations and contact
information for our venues and staff, so that they can also be in a position
to deliver great customer service through our managed office space.”
A .tel domain provides organizations of all sizes a named listing with
unlimited contact information in a global directory, accessible from any
device connected to the internet. Customers can then search for and find
up-to-date contact information quickly at little or no cost to them,
connecting with .tel owners how they want to. Additionally, the .tel is search
engine optimized through its ability to store indexable keywords, providing
additional content for branded discoverability on the web. All of this is
provided without any further investment over and above cost of purchasing the
domain name, such as website building and maintenance, web hosting or other
services normally associated with domain name hosting. It also requires no
technical skill to set up, being managed by a simple dashboard.
Applications for trademarked domain names are already being received
through a network of well over 100 ICANN-accredited registrars on a
first-come, first-served basis, meaning that companies could easily miss out
on owning .tel domain names for important trademarks. Registrars from
Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services (DBS) through to Moniker are providing
.tel to their customers.
Anders Ericsson, CEO of Melbourne IT DBS
(http://www.melbourneitdbs.com/), said: “The .tel domain is unique in its
focus and an innovative internet communications tool. Organizations will want
to secure their brand names to gain a competitive edge in what could become a
significant online directory in the very near future.”
Monte Cahn, President of Moniker (http://www.moniker.com), which has had
a unique role in revolutionizing the domain name aftermarket through their
pioneering work in staging live auctions, expects strong appeal for the .tel
top level domain after the initial Sunrise period.
“”This will be a valuable
new top-level domain,” said Moniker founder Monte Cahn. “We’ve had great
success with TLD introductions, and we expect a strong adoption rate for .TEL.
With the convenience of getting a turn-key website and getting immediate
traffic from the .TEL directory, any strategic-minded business should be sure
to include .TEL names in their domain name asset plans.”
