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ICANN Plans Dedicated .TEL Domain Extension

7:40 am on April 24, 2006 | Category: Business, Web Services

In a bid to increase the integration between telephones and the internet, internet domain regulator, ICANN, is making plans to set up a new top-level domain extension, by the name of .TEL.

.TEL websites would serve as a dedicated extension for users to publish their up-to-data contact information, including phone and fax numbers. Such sites could eventually be integrated with direct-call technology, allowing visitors to place free calls over the website over a VoIP connection.

At first glance, this seems like a pretty good idea, but I have some doubts that it will attract more than a small niche crowd. After all, most people who want their contact information posted online already have it available on their own websites.

The only way that this would attract a huge following is if .TEL domain names were offered for free. If that were done, however, and everyone had their own dedicated contact domain, the system could serve to make life a lot easier for spammers and those operating phishing scams.

Overall, adding a .TEL extension is definitely a innovative concept, but implementing it properly will be a tricky task indeed.

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