billgates.tel domain could be yours for the asking

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 06 March 2007 06:11

Your IT - Home IT

Phil Colebrook, registrar relations manager at Telnic, told iTWire: "Our tentative timetable is for the .tel sunrise launch in the fourth quarter of 2007. Sunrise rules will follow a first-come first-served basis. There will be no premium list comparable to what .mobi attempted. Full policies will be published 2nd quarter of 2007.

"Pricing policies will be inline with other gTLDs. The detailed pricing for sunrise, landrush and general availability will also be announced during the  second quarter of 2007 along with the policies."

 Telnic is developing a comprehensive registrar pack that will include all .tel related administrative, marketing and technical material. The registrar packs will available for distribution once pricing and policies have been announced.

On the sunrise procedure, Colebrook said: "The way we expect it to work at present is if that you have, for example, a US or an Australian trademark you will have an equal chance of getting your .tel domain name. You will send your trademark registration details in electronically and if it is valid and owned by you the domain name is yours. If you have had your US trademark for 70 years and there is someone who has the Australian trademark for two years, you will stand an equal chance. The big question being asked is what the cut-off date for trademarks will be and we are still working on that."

Individuals names will not be allocated until he landrush period, but applications will not even need to prove that the name they are seeking to register is their own.

Colebrook said: "Sunrise will only be for trademark holders. Registrations for individuals will be through landrush, where we will simply be operating a first-come, first-served system. There will be no requirement for individuals to prove that they name that they are applying for is their name."

When users access a .tel domain they will simply be provided with the domain name owner's contact details, but with the distinction from a traditional website that this information will be stored within the DNS system., making it distributed and reliable.