What stinks more than a rotten tomato?
The dot tel Registry is about to release its stash of 2-character .tel domains, in a landrush scheme that will be quite hefty.
On top of that, it appears that the castrated TLD – .tel domains can’t be parked or developed – has managed to change its ICANN agreement and is also releasing all numeric domains in the same period.
From the Name.com press release:
- Landrush is a 2 week period starting 8AM MDT (UTC 14:00) on Wednesday June 1st. You’ll pay $239 to apply for any .TEL name you wish – if you get it, congratulations! If not, you’ll be refunded $214.
- General Availability Registrations will be open beginning June 14 at 8AM MDT (UTC 14:00). All domains that were not applied for during the Landrush period will become available for $9.99
The number of .tel domain registrations has been dropping religiously, despite the Registry’s attempts to improve on its relationships with Chinese companies to promote .tel in China. HosterStats shows a drop of 12,000 registrations between April and May; that might not seem too many, but the total number of .tel domains is now a mere 314,000.
The release of the 2-char .tel domains and the introduction of numeric registrations seems to be the “final trick” from the Registry’s hat.
The functional obscurity of .tel and its lack of usability for the web are the real reasons that .tel has been a lost case from the very beginning.
Sheesh!Another brilliantly chosen TLD from ICANN struggles to stay in the game.The brains at ICANN really know how to pick ’em!
Imagine all the hundreds of dead in the water gTLDs that are being lined up for release in the next few years – we’ll have to create a vast sort of TLD graveyard or cyberspace ghost towns.