Data is far from insufficient, but still, the equation does not compute.
As I’ve written many times before, numbers cannot be disputed. And the numbers about .tel are saying that there is zero growth in that TLD.
While 200k .tel domains were registered between launch to mid-summer of last year, the remainder of the year and a half that dot tel has been around hasn’t been impressive at all.
In August 2009 TelNIC achieved 200k .tel registrations, and by December 30k more had been added. From then on, .tel reached its peak in March of this year – oddly, right before the one year registrations were about to be evaluated on the “drop or not” scale.
It’s been downhill since, with numbers remaining flat around the 240k .tel registrations, despite the introduction of IDN .tel domains.
I read at Domain Name Wire yesterday, that TelNIC will be introducing single letter and two letter .tel domains, apparently in an attempt to add some cashflow via auction or direct sales.
Considering how there are 676 2-letter combinations, TelNIC would probably not release the roughly 240 ISO 3166-1 two-letter combinations; perhaps, as a last resort to add further funds to the bank. Who knows, one day we might see .fr.tel to be promoted as the French revolutionary TLD that would compete against .fr
The biggest failure of .tel has been its restrictive DNS layer and inability to offer – at least, as an option – the ability to turn that layer off and utilize proper DNS records. That, *might* have driven .tel sales up. But let’s not forget .tel was also promoted as a quick way to interact socially, by giving for example .tel URLs to the hot chick you met at the bar instead of a phone number. Unfortunately, the attempt to offer .tel domains to MySpace users wasn’t met with much excitement; once again, TelNIC bid on the wrong horse: who has time for MySpace, when everyone is using Facebook.
Overall, I mostly feel sorry for the few dozen outspoken fans of .tel who truly believed in its initial launch and hoped TelNIC would improve on the functionality and manageability of the .tel domains. As this hasn’t happened yet, the timing of releasing the single and two letter .tel domains appears to be simply for financial reasons.
Some recommended reading from the past:
Fool’s gold Part 2: What the .tel FAQ means
Fool’s gold Part 3: It’s a .mad .mad .tel world
Acro – this is a great synopsis of the current situation with .tel. Keep in mind this company raise something like $35 million! They also thought of this idea before Facebook and MySpace came around. Delays getting ICANN to approve .tel killed any hope it had.
I think some of the .tel fans asked Telnic to do this. Shortly after the .co launch, I saw a campaign from .tel owners to ask Telnic to release one and two character domains.
But what’s the point? I don’t understand how this will boost the marketing of the extension. There are other underlying problems. Having a 1 character .tel won’t help.
Hey Andrew – there are so many unanswered questions regarding .tel that people have lost patience. While .tel had a promising start it became evident that they dragged their feet with both promoting the TLD in the media, ensuring deals would be in place and even tweaking the way domains displayed content. On a text only domain, adding AdSense was definitely a surreal joke. Unfortunately, TelNIC did not manage to provide the ability to add DNS records for proper hosting on top of the remaining data.