ICANN Sanctions Short and Numeric-only .tel Domain Names

Telnic Limited, the registry operator for the .tel top level domain (TLD), has announced that following the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board meeting conducted in January 2011, ICANN has now approved the release of both short (such as jj.tel) and numeric-only (such as 442074676450.tel or 88.tel) .tel domain names for registration.

In a press release, Khashayar Mahdavi, CEO of Telnic (News - Alert), said, “I would like to thank the ICANN Board and Staff for considering our recent applications and enabling more choice for businesses and individuals when seeking to register their .tel domains. In the near future, organizations with numeric-only trademarks or with two-letter brands will be able to register their .tel names and individuals will be able to get unique or lucky numbers as a fun online identifier.”

Details of how to register short and numeric-only .tel names will be made available in due course. One-character ASCII (such as x.tel), single-digit (such as 3.tel) and names that may be confused with country code top level domains extensions (known as ccTLDs, such as .us or .uk) will not be available for registration.

Over 300,000 .tel names have been registered to date in over 180 countries.

Founded in 2000, Telnic Limited is the UK-based Registry Operator and Sponsoring Organization for the new .tel sponsored top level domain (sTLD), which launched in March 2009 and which has over 300,000 .tel names registered. In 2009, it won a UK IT Industry Award as well as an InfoCommerce Group Models of Excellence Award. Telnic’s backend registry services are provided by NeuStar (News - Alert).

ICANN was in news recently when UniversalBusinessListing.org (UBL), the business identity management service of Name Dynamics Inc., and Telnic Limited had announced a partnership to integrate .tel domains into UBL's commercial offerings.

Sujata Garud is a TMCnet freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Janice McDuffee