Any TLD that *forces* trademark owners to pay a premium price of $125 per year with a compulsory 3 year registration period, is a few cents short of a Madoff scheme. How many trademark holders bit the bullet and forked out $300+ bucks to ensure that their trademark survived the onslaught of this new zombie TLD?
.tel opened its registration doors yesterday, much to the delight of the salivating domain investors it managed to convince about its usefulness. Through its carefully promoted propaganda videos, which included alluring blondes strolling through the London commuter trains, TelNic is trying hard to conceal the fact that .tel sucks harder than a British-made Hoover.
As expected, when registration opened to the general public at 3pm GMT yesterday, most registrars failed to connect to the TelNic registry as hundreds of requests per second filled up the available bandwidth. I tried using Moniker, Dotster and Name.com – the first one failed miserably to even query .tel availability. It took two identical bulk orders for Dotster to secure my domains – that are still not resolving. Name.com was the cheapest at $8.95 per year and a very smooth registration process and sports a management panel that left me impressed.
So what domains did I register?
My trademark, Acroplex was the obvious one. Although I won’t be able to use it like Acroplex.mobi and redirect it to my .com, at least I will set it up as a “business” card. For the sake of this very blog, I also registered Acro.tel; then my last name, and by then I decided to experiment a bit further – all at Name.com’s low rate of $8.95 a pop. GraphicsDesign.tel was registered for me and VoiceTalent.tel for my brother, who’s a radio producer. I ended up registering a couple more domains to experiment a bit with SEO.
All in all, knowing that I’ll never be able to monetize, resell or build a real web site around these .tel zombies, I was content with my purchases. The ongoing argument about .tel’s usefulness has been turned into a well-placed PR propaganda from TelNic that has its followers and “nay-sayers”.
The best purchase of the day though, was when I registered TelSucks.com
Tags of your aticle: .tel sucks, Forcing TLD holders to pay premium price, TelSucks.com
LOL
Now the case is closed 😀
I tried not registering a domain, but I fell for two good one’s that will serve as a trial. Although I’m still having trouble setting up the domain, they should have invested money on a more modern system instead of having propaganda all over the place.
Well-said, Dan. The .tel system is so 1990 it’s not even funny.
so 1990? I don’t understand how someone could say that when we have never had a domain that forced you to use specific software before?
I registered one for my company as a test. When I found out I could list my 800-number but not with my extension, I called Name.com and got a cheerful refund. I like the idea of .tel, but not the execution.
Also I think the investment value may be more in registering people’s names like “Ian Smith.tel” and not generics like “Business.tel”. Given the limitations of the domain, I don’t see how the generics are going have much “real” value in the long term. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
Chris, the Internet in the 90’s – pre-commercial and non-graphical; that’s what I meant. There was also the French Minitel in the 80’s and 90’s that reminds me of this pointless interconnection of “virtual card” .tel domains.
Oooooh, so acro bought some .tels!!!
I agree with you on the difficulty of getting names on the 24th.
I fed Dotster and 007names.com the same list for registering. Dotster said they didn’t exist, and 007names hung on a jsp script.
Meanwhile, I regged my names through Moniker. What a nightmare. Bulk Register to me means a one-click and done purchase. Not a confirm the OATB info for each of the domains you want.
Anyway, in addition to ucla.tel and breweries.tel, I have a few for my other online .coms, my name, and my son’s name.
I’m waiting for Part 6….. 😀
Johnny, you won’t find me registering .tel domains in a speculative manner. Unfortunately, that’s what most people don’t understand; it’s a TLD that offers very little outside personal use – however limited this is.
PS Seems someone beat you to minister.tel
I think the TLD will offer more in time.
I got ucla.tel and breweries.tel not as speculation, but as “SEO lab monkeys”
Minister.tel wasn’t on my list. Dangit!
By the way,
How did you know (because I don’t remember telling you) I would have liked minister.tel?
You are the SEO/Google master!