Give freedom to .tel owners ?

First of all - "hello" to everybody, as this is my first post here.

I have several .tel names registered, still wondering whether or not it was the right decision, and am quite interested in development of these domains, both technical and commercial development.

In my opinion the way to increase the number of .tel domains registered would be straightforward. See, as a .tel name owner, I'd like some more freedom. I mean OK, I know and really appreciate the idea - DNS usage, simple form, simple management via dashboard, no necessity of hosting and html programming and so on and so on. That's great.

But there are various potential .tel owners. Some would be happy with what exists. Some of them would say, however, this is not a real domain... :-)

So why not giving people the choice ? Why not introducing a checkbox in the dashboard that would mean "redirect" or "forward" (whatever word appropriate) the domain to mycomdomain.com ? Or even not checkbox but a simple rule - if I configured a contact element being an URL, and if I say it is my MAIN CONTACT - then that means I want everybody that goes to myteldomain.tel to be redirected to mycomdomain.com .

Some people for their reasons could use .tel in the "generic" way, some others - would like the "forward" way. But I believe the number of registered domains could grow. And then maybe the registry could find money for technical development, marketing, implementation of what they said was the roadmap and so on.

Can that be done ? Technically ? Legally, I mean the agreement between Telnic and ICANN ?

What do you think, I'll appreciate your comments, also (especially...) if this subject was already on the agenda at some point and was killed as not feasible for whatever reason.

W.

Hello Wlodecky,

Welcome to the forum and thank you very much for these valuable suggestions.

The redirect of a .tel to a .com domain (or to other TLDs) isn’t possible for the following reasons:

1.) No user defined A records are allowed per Telnic’s agreement with ICANN.
2.) By limiting the content on .tel to DNS content only, all .tel domains are 100 % free from viruses and malware.
3.) The structure of .tel domains need to be structured uniformly to provide a future use of new intended applications, especially social networking, name dialing and machine-to-machine communications.
4.) Telnic’s internal strategy has been always against integrating HTML or similar content so far.

But the fact is so many .tel owners have expressed exactly your today’s wishes many times in the past and it is obvious there is an urgent need to make the design of .tel domains more attractive and flexible.

The above mentioned issues can be solved:

1.) Instead of using A records other technologies can produce the same or other good result, e. g. iframes.
2.) Other mechanisms can provide also a save security environment, e. g. limitation of allowed HTML content or implemented virus scans.
3.) Additional content can be integrated by securing the original DNS structure.
4.) This is the hardest part since Telnic doesn’t allow any interference into their strategy from any party and Telnic is not ready to talk about improvements, especially not when they are extensive in scope.
(This sounds harsh, but unfortunately it’s the truth – at least at the moment!)

There are different ways to improve the flexibility of .tel domains as soon Telnic can be convinced that the current design doesn’t fulfill the market demands.

I guess we’ll have to wait for that a little bit longer, because the 3 new templates from Telnic and the 1 new template from Telnames have just been introduced and Telnic surely want to see first if registration numbers can be increased with it.
Of course this won’t be the case (because .tel is completely unknown in the world) and perhaps in 1 year Telnic will reconsider its strategy again, so they will be more open-minded for reasonable improvements.

At last I want to refer to another helpful solution discussed here on the forum:

How .tel can be rescued!

Thank you for addressing this important issue,
Alex

Even I wrote my state of knowledge related to this matter, I would be interested what other members think about it:

• How flexible the design of a .tel domain should be?
  
• Is it necessary to integrate content from websites of other TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .co.uk, .de)?
  
• Do we need extended content and more features for .tel domains?
  
• What options do you miss on .tel domains?

@TelTalk

Thanks for your exhaustive answer, much appreciated.

See I'm not too deeply technical (anymore) and am far from understanding all the details on how DNS, .tel and other TLDs work exactly. The point I'm trying to make is that I believe solving the question of redirecting the user somewhere else when typing .tel name in his/her browser would help everybody.

Now, I can imagine this to be implemented on either end. Record A in DNS - is it really necessary ? Correct me if I'm wrong but this is not that my Firefox browser is interpreting DNS information...? This is rather Webproxy that my browser is being instructed to connect to, and whatever the Webproxy really is - it is producing the html code that my Firefox is processing to show me the proper webpage. So - rightly or not - I can imagine this webproxy thingy forcing my Firefox to connect to other webpage - namely the one that I set as the main contact using my .tel dashboard.

Now - wouldn't Telnic implement that for whatever reason ? Pity... So - would it be difficult to create a kind of extension or plugin for most popular web browsers doing exactly this ? I mean interpreting what my .tel page shows as a primary contact and if this is an URL - just going there ? Note that if the plugin is not active, then it takes the user just one more click to go to the "destination" eventually, anyway. The same logic as let's say a kind of dialer, which would dial a phone number - if it is set as the main contact for my .tel name.

I understand that this would still be a kind of "prosthesis" but in many cases I believe it would very much attract or convince people to maintain a good keyword in .tel as their domain, while their content could be anywhere else, under any other TLD, hosted anywhere.

What am I missing ?

Cheers
W.

wlodecky wrote:I understand that this would still be a kind of "prosthesis" but in many cases I believe it would very much attract or convince people to maintain a good keyword in .tel as their domain, while their content could be anywhere else, under any other TLD, hosted anywhere.

You're absolutely right!

This solution would have even more advantages, e. g. when you update your .com your .tel would be updated at the same time.

An A record is just the address record inside of the Domain Name System (DNS) which returns the IP address. It maps the hostnames to an IP address of the host.
The current state is ICAAN doesn’t allow the redirect of a .tel domain to a domain with a different extension.
But that isn’t needed. For the visitor of a .tel domain it would be enough to display some framed content from another website.
This could be the whole website or only special options like widgets, text (e. g. blogs), pictures or anything else.

BTW Telnic is providing this service already for logos, pictures and videos. So the current requirement could be just to provide more options, especially for:

• Longer and formatted text
  
• Pictures with more flexible sizes
  
• Widgets

If Telnic would provide a bigger section where longer text from a .com could be displayed, we would have won a lot already, because in that case we could use .tel domains for blogs and product catalogs what is impossible at the moment.

Technically and legally it wouldn't be a problem to realize it. Surely the comprehension of such a solution needs to be agreed between Telnic and their customers.

TelTalk wrote:If Telnic would provide a bigger section where longer text from a .com could be displayed, we would have won a lot already, because in that case we could use .tel domains for blogs and product catalogs what is impossible at the moment.

In the long run this would be nice to see, but a smaller solution would
help cover the urgent needs already:

• Flexible sorting of text sections
  
• Enlargement of text length
  
• Allowance of different fonts and text sizes adjustable with the control
  panel
  

If Telnic would realize all included capabilities from the new template 8
as it was designed, we could extend the use of .tel domains extensively:

TelTalk wrote:

• Template 8 can't fold the sections as intended.
  
• Template 8 can't compress related content as intended.
  
• Template 8 doesn't use new icons as intended.
  
• Template 8 doesn't separate folders and contacts as intended.
  
• Template 8 doesn't allow flexible sorting of text as intended.
  

IMHO the new templates are already nice. Lack of options for positioning flexible text is the biggest deficit right now.

So - what really is the limitation in the agreement between Telnic and ICANN, do we know that ? Is it specifically saying that the A record can't be modified ? Or it is kind of more general, and Telnic is not allowed to take any steps with the intention to "redirect" a .tel domain ?

I mean let's assume for the moment they would like to do that. Can they for example modify the webproxy so that my browser immediately goes to the URL that is set as the main contact for a .tel domain ? I mean - just on the ground of the agreement with ICANN ?

Wlodek

wlodecky wrote:So - what really is the limitation in the agreement between Telnic and ICANN, do we know that ?

Good question!

I guess this is the related paragraph:

ARTICLE III COVENANTS

Section III.1 Covenants of Registry Operator. Registry Operator covenants and agrees with ICANN as follows:

(d) Registry Operator Operations

(ii) Functional and performance specifications for operation of the TLD shall be as set forth in Appendix 7 hereto, and shall address without limitation minimum requirements for DNS services; operation of the shared registration system; and nameserver operations. Registry Operator shall keep technical and operational records sufficient to evidence compliance with such specifications for at least one year. ICANN may audit such records for the preceding twelve (12) months from time to time upon no less than 10 days advance written notice, provided that such audits shall not exceed one per quarter. Any such audit shall be at ICANN's cost.

Source: .tel Registry Agreement

More: .tel Registry Agreement (Index) and Appendix 7 to .tel Registry Agreement (Functional and Performance Specifications)


This sounds not very concrete, but I couldn't find a more detailed description!

Any more ideas from others?

I don’t think the cause is a legal agreement.
Telnic have always been resistant to improvements suggested by domain owners.
It’s only a strategic decision not to implement advanced content into .tel.