As we predicted a month ago, the growth rate of .TEL – the only TLD that apparently came out of the ICANN stables while still in beta – has remained practically zero.
With 245k registrations upon the start of September, .tel is now being threatened for double numbers by a very healthy-looking .Me.
The Montenegro national TLD gained 11k registrations last month, inching up to a total of 427k .me domains, on its way to twice the number of .tel registrations.
Meanwhile, the TLD of the year, .Co is still gaining momentum.
Officially at 469k registrations two weeks ago, it surpassed .tel in 45 days, all while .tel exists for a year and a half now.
The current counter at CoInternet.co indicates that the number of .Co registrations will cross the 500,000 threshold sometime in the next 24 hours.
It sure looks like a huge success, both for the Colombian national TLD but also for Pappas Group – the marketing team behind the .Co Registry and campaign.
As for the .tel Registry, TelNIC – it’s probably rethinking its strategy, wishing they had spent more on infrastructure instead of creating silly latte commercials.
We (easyDNS) dropped support for new .TEL registrations last month. Just pulled the plug on them the TLD is so profoundly broken.
(And not a single customer has said a word about it, either).
Mark – it’s a pity TelNIC appears to be so stubborn with regards to how the DNS layer is managed. The TLD itself is far from bad, I actually prefer it over .mobi. But the inability to treat .tel as any regular TLD e.g. parking or developing content on it, made .tel a freak TLD from its inception.
dot co—RIP
It will be sooner than later.
Hey now, BullS – let the numbers do the talking.