A smart move by Telnic ?

As others may have noticed it is sometimes impossible to register a really good .TEL domain even though a Whois entry shows it is available !

Here's one example - IAN.tel

This is a very good domain name, being both a popular male name and an acronym - see http://www.abbreviations.com/IAN

Check it's availability at http://www.whois.com/whois/ian.tel - it's definitely available.

Now go and try to register it (I've tried Name.com) and you will find it's NOT available !

Telnic are undoubtedly holding back very good .Tel domain names (apart from the 2-character country codes which ICANN probably insist on being kept back permanently).

Is this legal - my guess is YES - I remember ICANN in the documentation on their site saying something to the effect that the .TEL gTLD was migrating (on 10-year renewal) to the standard NEW gTLD agreement, rather than the one-off agreement they had first of all.

AFAIK the Registries for the NEW gTLDs are allowed to hold good domain names back (usually for later premium registration sale) - so Telnic would be fitting into this pattern.

I suspect IAN.tel has not been held back by Telnic right from the initial 2009 registrations, but someone allowed it to drop and Telnic noticed that and decided to keep it for themselves to profit from.

The reason I say this is remember when Yellow Pages marketing supremo Ian Bowen-Morris joined Telnic - see https://yptalk.wordpress.com/tag/ian-bowan-morris/ - he wasn't given http://IAN.tel to use (all other Telnic employees got their first name .Tel) but http://IANBM.tel - presumably because http://IAN.tel was already taken by someone at the time ?

SO BEWARE LETTING VERY GOOD .TELS DROP - YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RE-REGISTER THEM !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

Ian Bowen-Morris let http://IANBM.tel drop after he left Telnic, though many others such as http://FIONA.tel and http://JUSTIN.tel kept theirs when they left.

mikeseaton wrote:SO BEWARE LETTING VERY GOOD .TELS DROP - YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO RE-REGISTER THEM !

That is what can always happen:
If you let drop a domain, someone else can grab it.
In this case Telnic grabbed it itself.

Maybe Telnic is on the search for some new sources of revenues.

Didn't work out well so far. New ideas have to come (like the one above)!

My variant is that it is done not but company Telnic LTD but by somebody from it, as his "private initiative". Who he could be it is difficult to guess because it seems that their team consists now of two persons.

The reason why it is done in this way (by blocking via Whois or in a similar way) and not registering to Telnic LTD, I think, is that that person in this way could keep TELs for himself (not for company) as long as he wish, and at the same time he does not need to pay any of his money for regs and so he does not risk his money.

In a case if TEL one nice day will "shoot up", he will register these TELs for his personal account and will use them (sell).

In a case TEL will never "shoot up" he will not spend a penny for keeping these TELs for years.

Of course, I could mistaken, but it seems to be a logical variant that we here are witnesses how "The No Lose Roulette System" has been invented.

I have tried to register many names which I have let drop in the past year or so, that the Whois says are not registered currently. Many are not available to register at any registrar now. Someone definitely seems to be cherry-picking the best names and placing them on hold for possible future use or sale. I do  not know if it is Telnic itself or someone else.

Here are some more domain names that do not appear in Whois as taken, yet they are unavailable currently:

lord.tel
gospel.tel (a former name of mine which dropped that I had at the old Telpages)
kjv.tel (another former name of mine that I let drop)
churches.tel
barn.tel

Has anyone heard officially from Telnic about this situation, of names not showing up in the Telnic Whois, yet they are not being allowed to be registered?

you sure like your religious names, I think Mana.tel is soon to drop

think it has religious meaning ..?

hulltv wrote:you sure like your religious names, I think Mana.tel is soon to drop

think it has religious meaning ..?

I am a Christian Evangelist (Minister) since 1995 using the Internet for evangelism. I have a fair share of Christian domain names over the years.

.church is available, I have my home city in .church and plan to develop it.
listing all the churches in the city

quickly looking looks like most geo.church have gone...