Developing an independent proxy and control panel for .tel domains

Our forum member Bunjie had a great idea in this topic:

Bunjie wrote:... organization that runs it's own proxy and control panel and does the things that we vote on adding.

Now we need a few things:

TelTalk wrote:

• .tel domain owners can profit from an independent proxy only if their .tel domains are located at that registrar where it is maintained.
  Therefore a registrar with competitive prices and a high portfolio of .tel domains / high amount of .tel customers comes into question.
  I suggest that can be only name.com (as the biggest .tel registrar after TelChina and with the cheapest retail price on the market).
  
• We need enough experienced and motivated programmers on a voluntary basis. That means we need to include Mark Kolb from Telmasters, Mike Seaton from TelDial and Placidus Fernando from TELcp.
  
• We need more forum members to collect and vote representative development ideas. Since this forum is not 2 weeks old yet, I hope this will come within the time.

Mark Kolb as the most active .tel developer gave the following response when asking about his opinion:

If you obtain permission, I will be in the venture 200%. I totally agree that name.com is the place to start and they have my support.

If we could really realize a .tel domain platform with advanced design and new features developed by external programmers, we would reach a complete different level for .tel and show its whole potential.

Mark Kolb had the same idea together with his friends already.

Since this activity isn't public yet, please contact him directly at mark@telmasters.com if you want to participate.

TelTalk wrote:Mark Kolb had the same idea together with his friends already.

Since this activity isn't public yet, please contact him directly at mark@telmasters.com if you want to participate.

I wasn't going to comment until a few others had, anyway that goes against the point of it, he's looking for an investment where as we're looking for a community driven open source project.

If he's all ready doing it in 'secret' well then that's no better than what telnic have done which has made it focused on what will make him/them the most returns, I would have preferred that it was a community effort and a 'second' choice for all 3rd party registrars to run this software so other .tel users who aren't at name can request they change over to the community based one.

If Mark really cared about the community and not just a return on investment like telnic does, donations for development cycles would be sufficient to fund developers, the idea being we vote on what we want and need added and the 'devs' work out how much time it will likely take and put a figure on it, we donate and they work on it because I'd rather my money went into an open source project than into his pocket just to get a return on what is likely his own proxy and not a community one.

We don't need dictators who are looking for a return on investments we need a community driven solution that 'devs' can't say no too.

So no I will not be participating in some close returns only investment scheme.

Bunjie wrote:... he's looking for an investment where as we're looking for a community driven open source project.

Oh, I didn't know that. I totally agree, such a project would benefit the most if it's open source.

There are some domain investors / developers which would profit a lot if .tel would become a success.
And a better control panel with more features would support this target a lot.

Therefore it should be in their own interest to develop an independent proxy without fund raising first. And it should include the interests of the community / all .tel domain owners.

Hi Guys,
I shared some information privately with Alex yesterday and did not expect Alex would comment.
So to clear the air, I am not developing a private proxy and not looking for investment.
Development of a proxy and CTH cannot be done unless you are a registrar.
And, BTW, even though Telnames is NOT a registrar they are using a loophole to make it look like they are.
I hope that air is cleared also soon by Telnic and Telnames.
If anything comes up, everyone will know and benefit.
Please stop speculating.
Mark

Welcome to the forum, Mark!

I'm sorry if any non-public or even wrong information has been leaked. That was not my intention. Instead I wanted to redirect all questions concerning this matter directly to you.

I respect the privacy of every member. Should I have published anything sensitive, please let me know and I will correct my comments.

After Mark gave this helpful information, the question is open if we will find enough participants for the project of an open source control panel for .tel domains.

Since this is an important initiative, I wrote the following e-mail to name.com:

Hello,

The control panel for .tel domains (at name.com and all other registrars)
has only options for 5 different templates which are limited in design and
features.

Aled Williams (Director of Customer Services at Telnic) gave this public
comment:

As has been mentioned on the forum several times, Telnic has made it
possible for Registrars to host and maintain their own CTH and as such
produce their own proxy variations. Any features/restrictions that are made
in these custom versions have no impact on the standard CTH which is
provided by Telnic to all registrars, including the number of records in a
folder, the number of characters permitted in each section and the number
of subfolders permitted.

Me (...) and some friends have the wish to use a more advanced control
panel with more features.

We are thinking about realization an independent proxy and control panel
for .tel domains, as example on open source base.
For realization the involvement of a registrar would be necessary.

I would like to ask you as the biggest registrar for .tel domains after
TelChina if you are interested in offering an advanced control panel which
would include a more competitive use for .tel domains either as open source
project or by involving external and / or your internal programmers.

Do you think we could build a partnership with you for such an innovative
project?

Kind regards
(...)

JH wrote:I would like to ask you as the biggest registrar for .tel domains after
TelChina if you are interested in offering an advanced control panel which
would include a more competitive use for .tel domains either as open source
project or by involving external and / or your internal programmers.

Do you think we could build a partnership with you for such an innovative
project?

Jens, did you get a response from Name.com re the above ?

If they're not interested in developing their own software, perhaps they might be interested in doing a deal with Telnames to offer their Template/CP/CTH as an option ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:Jens, did you get a response from Name.com re the above ?

Yes:

name.com in May 2012 wrote:Thanks for your email. I'll certainly forward your email off internally to our directors to see if they would be interested in something like this.

They will contact you directly if interested. Thanks.

And after a reminder one week later:

name.com wrote:I forwarded your email to the proper channels internally, but did not hear back. We are fairly busy these days and it may be difficult to devote the proper time to get that functionality in place, however. If they are interested in pursuing such a project, they will certainly reach out to you as I provided your email address as well.

Nothing after that anymore.

Thanks Jens for the update - so that's a dead end then !

I must admit I'm not that surprised - registrars want to focus on their main job which is registration/renewal of as many domains in as many profitable extensions as possible.

I still believe that TelHosting should be managed centrally by one company - so many registrars are still running into problems such as when domains change ownership but the CTH account remains linked to the previous owner.

I've had to deal with my fair share of these problems - they get resolved in the end - but it's all time and unnecessary hassle !

So it looks like there is now a straight choice between 2 completely different .Tel products - one from Telnames and another from Telnic's existing registrars - so confusing for newbies who think a .Tel is simply just a .Tel !

Where will all this end ?

IBM used to use a very effective marketing technique call "Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt" to destroy competitors.

I sometimes wonder whether Telnic is inadvertently creating F.U.D. amongst it's own potential customers - there's certainly some reason they are staying away from the .Tel extension !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:I sometimes wonder whether Telnic is inadvertently creating F.U.D. amongst it's own potential customers - there's certainly some reason they are staying away from the .Tel extension !

Certainly not!
After TEL hasn't grown in the beginning as expected a lot of domain investors have dropped their domains.
But also a surprisingly high number of domain investors still keep them.
The potential that TEL will create a new market is still there.

There are only two kinds of TLD:
1.) All website based extensions which includes com, net, org, all ccTLD and all new TLD
2.) Only one (!) DNS based extension which is TEL
I don't know what will happen in the future, but if the DNS will play a role, then TEL will explode!
The early investors certainly speculate for that. That’s why people are only waiting and watching what happens!
Until we see some strong signs from TEL this situation won’t change much.