What if … Telnames will be a success in a few years?

Just a few, not necessarily connected speculations (perhaps some not so far from reality):

1. .tel domains at Telnames will be the hub for the administration of contact data and those will get transferred to Yellow Pages and directories by automatic interfaces.
2. Google will be used only for content searches while directories will be used for contact searches.
3. Every small business wants to own a .tel domain.
4. Telnames will introduce the features from Telnic (sub domains, data privacy, single-sign-on, ads and profiles).
5. .tel domains at Telnames will be integrated in cell phone applications while .tel domains at Telnic will be excluded (as they are excluded from all activities already now).
6. .tel domains at other registrars than Telnames.com will be worthless (or registrars will complain at ICANN and force Telnic to provide the same service to all registrars).
7. Another top-level-domain will imitate the .tel concept (perhaps with a data system through an alternative storage method instead of using the DNS). It would be easy to develop applications faster than Telnic.
8. Depending on the speed of number 6 or 7 Telnic will lose all customers (perhaps for the good of Telnames) or will even recover.
9. Apple or Google will notice the importance of contact data and will invent an alternative to .tel domains. It's easier to fight a single registrar (Telnames) than a registry (Telnic) with more than 100 affiliated registrars.

Number 6, 7, 8 and 9 show the dangers of Telnic's decision to leave their old customers behind.

@TelGirl - Interesting post !

I think Point 7 could easily happen given the current lack of progress with .tel, though not necessarily with a new gTLD.

It could easily happen at domain level - say someone has xx.com and creates subdomains in the format user.xx.com in the millions.

It's already been done before with uk.com (and various other country codes) whereby people register user.uk.com which looks like a domain name but is really a subdomain name, since uk.com is actually not a TLD but a domain name itself.

http://MikeSeaton.tel

Is the game over for .tel ?
Taka a look: http://www.teltalk.org/t1234-is-this-the-end-of-tel