Dot Tel – A new way to look at web.

.Tel , a new gTLD was launched last year . It revolutionized the Internet by coming up with unique features. Dot Tel is not just an extension but a service that provides the contact information and business details of the Registrant to the world. It’s the virtual Visiting Card that can be shared online and offline by giving the URL of the domain name. For example, if you need to contact me or you need to know about me, just go to <www.gurpreet.tel> and you can find all my contact details including my personal and work websites, Social Networking User Names, my area of expertise, my work etc.

Wondering why a corporation or a brand owner or an individual should have .Tel identity. Here are some of my personal views on the same.

• Its your Visiting Card
• Brand Owners should secure their identities so that it is not misused or potentially squatted by the third parties. Moreover, there may be instances wherein there can be different owners of one mark in different jurisdictions. So its always recommended to secure your name at your earliest.
• It provides a direct point of contact to the person searching for you or your Brand or Corporation. This can be very useful for the business houses having office locations at different parts of city or world.
• It Provides Geo Tagging meaning thereby one can locate you through the map location and reach you.
• It provides comprehensive platform to store contact details such as Name, Address, Telephone Numbers, Social Networking links (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Orkut, gTalk etc), Business or Individual Information, Keyword base content integration amongst others.
• It provides privacy features, which lets you control the disclosure of the information to your visitors according to their profile.
• All the information or the content uploaded by you is stored directly in the DNS that makes it faster to retrieve than other domain names.
• It comes with Free Hosting space, so no need for separate hosting provider
• It does not require any designing as it comes with pre fixed template. However, this week, Telnic has unveiled new features that allow the owner of the Domain Name to customize the design of the .Tel page from the control panel. It includes changing of colors, logo integration etc.

There can be various uses of .Tel Domain Name to different individuals, Professionals and Business people that can be achieved by having the Identity. I wish to clarify that .Tel Identity should not be seen as replacement to your existing websites or Domain Name strategies rather its an addition to your Domain Portfolio or an Online Identity. Since, .Tel Domains does not provide for the detailed information about your products or services, it can be useful to link those products or services through your .Tel Identity.

For whom it is intended?

• Individuals who need web presence without managing multiple service providers
• Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who wants to share their basic contact details and work with their customers and do not want to have complete website OR wants link to the page having the complete information on Blogs, Web Directories or their web pages.
• Large Corporations having different departments, support centers, Public relations, range of product and services to offer having offices, distributors, agents in different cities around the world.
• Professionals; Extremely Helpful for Solo Practitioners or firms in the field of Law, Medicine, Architecture, Chartered Accountants, Real Estate Agents etc. where the contact information is the crucial source.
• Students; It can be extremely beneficial to have .Tel Identity of the student to the educational institutions and for a student to exchange his contact details with rest of his colleagues in the institution.

I would suggest .Tel is for everyone who wishes to be social and exchange visiting card with the society.

The next issue that arises from above discussion is, what should be the strategy to reserve or acquire .Tel Identity? I would advise following.

1.    Reserve Your Personal Name .Tel Identity (Example: Gurpreet.tel)
2.    Secure your Brand Name (Example: Cipfo.tel)
3.    Acquire Keyword Rich .Tel Names specific to your industry identifying your products or services (Example: InternetLawyer.tel, Trade-Mark.tel, DomainConsultant.tel)
4.    Invest for future (appsfor.tel, buy-sell.tel)

Besides this, .Tel has been working on various apps and has released various useful tools for the businesses that can be accessed by visiting the Telnic website. Since, it has been only one year, we expect that .Tel registry Telnic shall improve the functionality and add more value to the .Tel Identity in near future.

Talking plastic, it costs less than 15$/year depending upon your Registrar or Reseller. We expect the prices to be stable for next couple of years since it includes the cost of hosting. No wonder its bit expensive than .com/.net/.org but gives an independence to the owner to update the information within seconds through the control panel without relying on the third party or technical person to do so.

More importantly the contact and location can be updated without much hassle if an individual or corporation is moving or has changed the old contact details. The data on .Tel Identity can be accessed from any place and device connected to Internet (Your Computer, Netbook, Blackberry, PDAs or any WAP enabled smartphones). Therefore, it’s the name and not the number that matters.

This article has been authored by Gurpreet Singh, who is a founder member of Cyberspace & Intellectual Property Foundation and Internet lawyer. He advises the corporations and individuals on the issues relating to Cyber Crimes, social networking issues, Internet laws and Trademark & Domain name strategies.  He is in active practice with the law firm Amarjit & Associates, New Delhi since 2004 and is looking after this department since then. For more information about him please visit www.gurpreet.tel

{ 0 comments }