The Rise & Fall of the .Tel Project...

...as told by HosterStats.

2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014

The peak of 333,891 on 1 March 2011 has been followed by a steady decline to just 213,239 on 1 January 2014 - a drop of 120,652 or 36% !

Plan A (Telnic subdomain .tels) hasn't worked, Plan B (Telnames single page .tels) is just treading water, so what is Plan C that will create the essential "critical mass" in order that independent developers and investors will fund Phase 2 of .Tel using the DNS to generate automated software services ?

Kash - the numbers don't lie - can you please give the marketplace a statement explaining  "where do we go from here" ?

Or will it end up a case of "Will The Last Person To Leave The .Tel Project Please Turn Out The Lights" ?

I hope not !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

You can't say Telnic weren't ambitious in their application to ICANN !

Check out this document http://archive.icann.org/en/tlds/report/tel3.html

A couple of quotes:

b. Projected Growth Rate. The projected growth rate is about one million names per year for the first few years.

c. Startup Period. At startup, various business mechanisms will be used to dampen demand. Expected rates of registration are in the range of 5000 to 10,000 registrations per day.

So where did it all go wrong ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

Telnic has made one little mistake: Even if you are convinced about your product idea, it doesn't matter if you don't take the market into consideration.

In the last millennium (1998) Telnic had a revolutionary idea and incorporated their company for it. They created VHS videotapes (= .tel). Almost 10 years later (2009) Telnic finally launched their product. Meanwhile optical discs from other companies are dominating (= comprehensive homepage tools). While Telnic continue to improve their VHS videotapes, they forget to adjust to the competition and the improved environment. Telnic still believe VHS videotapes will be the future.

"Telnic still believe VHS videotapes will be the future"

Telnames is the optical disc of all profile-style listings, and makes all others look like old movie reels.

"So where did it all go wrong ?"

There isn't an optical disc player (global directory) worthy of the Telnames listings (optical discs), and thus no reason to own an optical disc. All owners are doing now is looking at their own optical discs and saying "Look, it's pretty and round and has a rainbow of colors on it."  Simple-minded monkeys who don't even know what the disc is for, so why would they complain about an optical disc player?

Telnic got MUCH INTEREST from smart monkeys when it said it would have BOTH ... IN THE BEGINNING.

Old .tel was the first clue that Telnic was a small batch of botching, bumbling bandits.  Telpages was the final straw for many, proving the absolute amateur, clueless, and confused nature of the team.

ALL TELNIC EVER HAD TO DO WAS BE PREPARED WITH A TELNAMES LISTING (OPTICAL DISC) COMPLIMENTED BY A REAL TELNAMES DIRECTORY (OPTICAL DISC PLAYER) AS PROMISED FROM DAY 1 AND NEVER DELIVERED. 

THE LONGER THEY DELAY THE MANDATORY, OBLIGATORY, AND OBVIOUS PAIR, THE LONGER THE DEATH MARCH.

DUH.

GoTel wrote:ALL TELNIC EVER HAD TO DO WAS BE PREPARED WITH A TELNAMES LISTING (OPTICAL DISC) COMPLIMENTED BY A REAL TELNAMES DIRECTORY (OPTICAL DISC PLAYER) AS PROMISED FROM DAY 1 AND NEVER DELIVERED.

It won't happen: http://www.teltalk.org/t469p8-when-tel-will-be-successful#2095

4444 wrote:

It won't happen: http://www.teltalk.org/t469p8-when-tel-will-be-successful#2095

"THE LONGER THEY DELAY THE MANDATORY, OBLIGATORY, AND OBVIOUS PAIR, THE LONGER THE DEATH MARCH."

Hence the march to death ...

telrific wrote:The last time I spoke to Kash on the telephone, directly concerning a more valuable TelPages directory, the conversation ended with Kash all but yelling "It's not going to happen, ok ?".

Kash is the boss and I believe the conversation he had with "Telrific" some time ago is still Telnic's current view on this topic.

After all how could they logically commit resources to something when they tell everyone the world's only Real-Time Global Directory already exists ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

The gTLD Total Registration figures for 1 February 2014 are now published at http://www.hosterstats.com/DomainNameCounts2014.php

The .TEL monthly fall of 64,673 (213,239 - 148,476) is actually outdone by the .MOBI fall of 124,998 (1,198,143 - 1,073,145) !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:The .TEL monthly fall of 64,673 (213,239 - 148,476) is actually outdone by the .MOBI fall of 124,998 (1,198,143 - 1,073,145) !

The situation at .mobi is not as scary as at .tel: if both TLDs would lose 148,000 domains again, .mobi would have still about 1 million registrations.

Actually in percentage terms .tel wins by a mile. It may have set the record through the history of the internet for a monthly drop for a domain extension. Unmatched vote of no confidence in the promoter of this extension, but we have probably only seen the beginning.

4444 wrote:The situation at .mobi is not as scary as at .tel: if both TLDs would lose 148,000 domains again, .mobi would have still about 1 million registrations.

@4444 - agreed, though I wonder why .MOBI lost so many registrations in just one month - any ideas ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

TelBlogger wrote:Actually in percentage terms .tel wins by a mile.

So .TEL is the best at something then !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:

4444 wrote:The situation at .mobi is not as scary as at .tel: if both TLDs would lose 148,000 domains again, .mobi would have still about 1 million registrations.

@4444 - agreed, though I wonder why .MOBI lost so many registrations in just one month - any ideas ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

At a guess because the other gTLDs can be reconfigured for mobiles and other devices leaving a special purpose mobile extension largely redundant. Mobi has some other uses I believe.

This may have had something to do with the big .MOBI reg drop - Afilias loses consolidated string confusion case against .mobile

Afilias of course is the Registry that runs the .MOBI, .INFO & .ORG extensions - and is my preferred operator to take over the .TEL extension when reality finally bites at Telnic/Telnames !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:I wonder why .MOBI lost so many registrations in just one month - any ideas ?

Usually such drops in big numbers appear after previous price discounts expire.
.mobi had 3 big losses (end of 2008, end of 2011 and beginning of 2014), but has always recovered.
Instead the trend for .tel is going clearly in one direction only.

Shows what happens when you screw your customers.

Here'a another DomainNameWire article worth reading - Responsive design is another blow to .mobi

It makes the headline comment

Responsive web design is a much more efficient approach to mobile browsing than a separate domain name.

Could that comment also be applied to the .TEL extension ?

What do you think ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:Could that comment also be applied to the .TEL extension ?

Definitely yes; it could make the whole idea of .tel dispensable.
.tel has to come up with something really special no other extension can compete with.
I have such ideas in mind and will try to support some other nTLDs with it, because Telnic isn’t interested in advancement.

TelBlogger wrote:Shows what happens when you screw your customers.

.Tel is the best example what happens if you have a unique idea and expect it could become a success without working on it.