Best Registrar for new .TEL domain?

I'm trying to register a new .tel domain but it seems many registrars barely support .tel. Even ones featured on Telnic's website, like name.com, fail at the registration page where I'm required to complete a form to create a CTH account.

I finally bought my domain through enom.com, but even they are having troubles creating a CTH account for me. It's been 5 days since I've bought the domain and I still can't do anything with it.

I'm aware from reading on this forum that .tel's and Telnic seem to be dying. That's fine, I'd just like to use one domain for email as it works well with my name. 

Is there a registrar that anyone could recommend for registering new .tels that currently works?

From a technical point of view, .tel domains work flawless.

This statement should be valid for almost all registrars of .tel domains:
https://www.telnic.org/registrars/list

Since you bought a .tel domain at eNom, please create a ticket here:
https://www.enom.com/help/default.aspx?

What is the exact problem with your CTH account?
As soon you have received your user name and password, you are able to administrate your .tel domain at eNom immediately here:
https://account.telhostingpanel.com/g2/login.action

Unfortunately that's not been my experience. 

On Name.com (the first one on telnic.org's registrar list), I could never get past the pre-registration form that asks you to pick a username for a CTH account. It seems it required an email address but I only found that out by inspecting the requests sent from the browser. Horrible user experience.

I have created a ticket at eNom, still waiting to hear back from them that they received my ticket or are working on it. I also emailed support [at] telnic.org 4 days ago and haven't received a reply from them either.

The problem I'm having with the CTH account is that one hasn't been created for me. The experience of doing so and the error messages I get back are very user unfriendly.

You will hardly reach anyone at Telnic, since all employees there are gone.

But it's a bit surprising that you don't receive a satisfying answer from name.com and / or eNom.
Please remind them to answer.
That's the only way to get your .tel domain running.

Please try these e-mail addresses:

• Name: support@name.com
  
• eNom: support@enom.com
  

Yeah, I sort of figured that's why I wouldn't hear from anyone at Telnic.

Thanks for those emails, I'll make sure to reach out to them again.

Just tried creating my CTH account at enom.com again, now I'm getting a different error: ERROR - Failed to retrieve .tel privacy information - command for .tel domain names only. Still very unhelpful.

Is there a separate place I can go to create a CTH account, or does it have to be through a registrar?

na8flush wrote:Is there a separate place I can go to create a CTH account, or does it have to be through a registrar?

Usually an automatic process is in place for providing the login credentials to you.
If this process has failed (as in your case), the registrar needs to create it manually for you.
Nobody else than the registrar (e.g. eNom) can do this for you.

na8flush wrote:I'm trying to register a new .tel domain but it seems many registrars barely support .tel.

IMO the .Tel Project is finished - see http://www.teltalk.org/t4447-telnic-s-tel-10-year-registry-agreement-with-icann-ends-on-30-may-2016#15759 - most of Telnic's key staff have already left - unless and until Telnic relinquish control of this extension.

The 10-year agreement for Telnic to run the .Tel extension expired on 30 May 2016 - as at the moment this has not been renewed but will be discussed at an ICANN meeting in October 2016.

Against this background how can you expect any Registrar to be interested in putting in the extra effort required to support the .Tel CTH environment - both in terms of staff and hardware resources - when .Tel is clearly in decline under Telnic's stewardship and there are so many alternative extensions to market ?

I still have many .tels - for around $12 per year they can be very useful for SEO purposes (and as a single point of contact which was their original purpose) - but I've now thinned down my .Tel holding substantially and tend to only keep really good commercial keywords - come October 2016 after the ICANN meeting I may take a decision on these.

http://MikeSeaton.tel

PS. I have personally found Name.com to be good at handling .Tel and any CTH issues.

Hi Mike, I was hoping you'd respond - you seem like the expert on all things .tel (with apologies to the username Expert who was responding earlier!)

I was wondering about the agreement expiring but since I didn't hear any news of Telnic dropping the domain, I assumed they would still be operating. But it sounds like that's not the case and I guess I'm waiting until October to find out what will happen to all .tel domains. 

Not familiar with what happens when a registry agreement expires and googling hasn't yielded many answers, will someone else take over running .tel? Or will the TLD expire permanently and all .tel domains are useless?

I'll try name.com in the future, but unfortunately their signup page for new .tel's is completely broken at the moment so you can't even purchase a .tel. I have reached out to them about that though.

na8flush wrote:I'll try name.com in the future, but unfortunately their signup page for new .tel's is completely broken at the moment so you can't even purchase a .tel. I have reached out to them about that though.

The purchase process of .tel domains at name.com and all other common registrars was and is running smoothly all the time. No current problems are known or existent.

MWX wrote:

na8flush wrote:I'll try name.com in the future, but unfortunately their signup page for new .tel's is completely broken at the moment so you can't even purchase a .tel. I have reached out to them about that though.

The purchase process of .tel domains at name.com and all other common registrars was and is running smoothly all the time. No current problems are known or existent.

Have you tried using name.com or enom.com to purchase .tel domains without a CTH account already? There are problems, and they are known - both name.com and enom.com have tickets where they are looking into this. Not sure with what authority you're making that statement.

na8flush wrote:Have you tried using name.com or enom.com to purchase .tel domains without a CTH account already?

Yes, this week - without any problems.

na8flush wrote:Not sure with what authority you're making that statement.

With the authority of myself as a customer of name.com.

na8flush wrote:I'm trying to register a new .tel domain but it seems many registrars barely support .tel. Even ones featured on Telnic's website, like name.com, fail at the registration page where I'm required to complete a form to create a CTH account.

I finally bought my domain through enom.com, but even they are having troubles creating a CTH account for me. It's been 5 days since I've bought the domain and I still can't do anything with it.

After registering a .tel domain, I have always received an email containing the CTH Url, the username and the password.

Every registrar has his own control panel with different Url.

I used DomainMonster, OVH and Webhosting24 (the cheapest at 8.95 EU)

MWX wrote:

na8flush wrote:Have you tried using name.com or enom.com to purchase .tel domains without a CTH account already?

Yes, this week - without any problems.

na8flush wrote:Not sure with what authority you're making that statement.

With the authority of myself as a customer of name.com.

My issue was with you claiming no problems exist. I'm glad you registered your domain succesfully, but I have indeed encountered problems. This was confirmed this morning as my email out to Telnic Support was responded to and they confirmed enom.com set up my account details incorrectly and must fix it.

I am saddened that you purchased a .tel. It's like throwing your money down a toilet and flushing it.

TelBlogger wrote:I am saddened that you purchased a .tel. It's like throwing your money down a toilet and flushing it.

What if another party will take over .tel? Isn't that a chance for improvements?

ixida wrote:

TelBlogger wrote:I am saddened that you purchased a .tel. It's like throwing your money down a toilet and flushing it.

What if another party will take over .tel? Isn't that a chance for improvements?

What until that happens (if it ever does) rather than flushing your cash down the loo now.

@na8flush

Is your problem solved meanwhile?

ixida wrote:@na8flush

Is your problem solved meanwhile?

Yup, I've since gotten it working.