It's taken nearly 15 YEARS to get where we are today !

Unbelievable but true, next month (April 2013) is the 15th anniversary of the company formed to develop the .tel extension into a worldwide success.

Here's an extract from ICANN document http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/report/tel3.html

Telnic is a private limited company registered in England and Whales and operating out of the UK. Telnic was incorporated under the name of Ixtel Limited, formed in April 1998. The company changed its name to Telnic Limited in 1999. Telnic is currently a limited operation focused on the sole objective of making .tel a reality.

That's about the same age as Google and older than Facebook !

How much longer will it take to make .tel a success ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

The background for Google and Facebook is not comparable, because these companies build their business on an existing TLD and had to register only the domains Google.com and Facebook.com.
With these domains both companies could start developing their own ideas.
With .tel it's different, because Telnic provides the infrastructure for .tel like Verisign does for .com.
And Telnic had to find a way through all the bureaucracy with ICANN which took many years.
Google and Facebook didn't have to worry about this.
As you can see these are cases from different sectors.
If you want to make a reasonable comparison, you can compare Telnic and Verisign for the management of domain extensions.

Moonlight wrote:The background for Google and Facebook is not comparable, because these companies build their business on an existing TLD and had to register only the domains Google.com and Facebook.com.

@moonlight

I wasn't saying they had the same technical challenges - merely pointing out the factual timescales it has taken for Google and Facebook to achieve worldwide success, compared to the non-success (a polite word for failure, at least so far) of the .tel extension over the nearly 15 years since the .tel project was started !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

PS. BTW Facebook was launched in February 2004 - see http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3 for the full story.

I understand Mike's point, but it's a question of perception. A company with about $2m yearly revenues isn't a failure. Only the domain investors in .tel have failed so far, because they didn't find a way to monetize their domains.

Toptel wrote:A company with about $2m yearly revenues isn't a failure.

@toptel

Have you heard the phrase "Turnover is Vanity - Profit is Sanity" ?

Telnic Limited's figures for the latest year recorded at https://www.duedil.com/company/03555437/telnic-limited/financials show an ANNUAL LOSS OF 3,384,278 GBP !

Obviously the 35,000,000 USD investment made by Telnic shareholders is being used to pay for this loss, year after year, but this money is gradually running out.

My guess is that 2016 will be crunch point when the shareholder funds get dangerously low - from memory I believe that's when Telnic's agreement with ICANN expires and running the .tel extension comes up for renegotiation.

http://MikeSeaton.tel

The real problem with .tel is that everyone is expecting from Telnic to become a big player like Facebook quickly.
That isn’t a realistic expectation, because only one of hundred thousand companies can accomplish such success. But this is partly the fault of Telnic itself, because Telnic put the expectations high when .tel was launched.
Telnic invited gamblers to play together with them, and now Telnic earns their frustration.

mikeseaton wrote:Telnic Limited's figures for the latest year recorded at https://www.duedil.com/company/03555437/telnic-limited/financials show an ANNUAL LOSS OF 3,384,278 GBP !

It shouldn't be a problem as long the current assets are high enough to cover the losses.
But I'm wondering where the annual loss comes from? What are the high expenses?

TelGirl wrote:The real problem with .tel is that everyone is expecting from Telnic to become a big player like Facebook quickly.

The real problem is the they do not want to develop their product further. I think that most customers are disappointed because of that reason, and not because they are not a "big player" yet.

TelGirl wrote:

mikeseaton wrote:ANNUAL LOSS OF 3,384,278 GBP

But I'm wondering where the annual loss comes from? What are the high expenses?

I guess that there are very good salaries + nice office in London's centre. Also may be that some unnecessary staff is employed: we counted once, and it seems that minimum of about 20 persons could be employed there.

mikeseaton wrote:Unbelievable but true, next month (April 2013) is the 15th anniversary of the company formed to develop the .tel extension into a worldwide success.

Here's an extract from ICANN document http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/report/tel3.html

Telnic is a private limited company registered in England and Whales and operating out of the UK. Telnic was incorporated under the name of Ixtel Limited, formed in April 1998. The company changed its name to Telnic Limited in 1999. Telnic is currently a limited operation focused on the sole objective of making .tel a reality.

That's about the same age as Google and older than Facebook !

How much longer will it take to make .tel a success ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

Hi Mike just to let you know that I am dropping boatforrent.tel boatsinsurance.tel and yachforsale.tel

Regards

http://movie.tel/

http://ideal.tel/

supercyberheroes wrote:Hi Mike just to let you know that I am dropping boatforrent.tel boatsinsurance.tel and yachforsale.tel

@supercyberheroes

Thanks for the info - but unless and until Telnames addresses these critical issues there is simply no reason for myself, or anyone else for that matter, to pick up dropping .tel domains.

Good luck with http://Movie.tel - though I think you need to sort out an automated way to update it (eg. RSS Feeds) to avoid a large ongoing manual task.

http://MikeSeaton.tel