Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Tuesday 24 March 2009, 4:52 PM
Did I get it? You .tel me
.tel is an interesting beast - it offers its users a communications hub, rather than a website per se. The clever bit is, it stores simple text-based information, such as a user's telephone number and Facebook profile name, on the domain name system (DNS) itself, rather than using the DNS for routing (it's original purpose).
So, naturally, I tried today to register a .tel domain name for myself. I went to my usual registrar, Telivo, to do this and was not surprised to find "meyer.tel" taken - I share my surname with a cookware company. I was however shocked to find "david.tel" available.
Obviously, I bought it. Or, at least, thought I had. I knew that successful registration was "pending", and knew the whole "david.tel" thing was a long shot, but was still a bit disappointed when the registration failed. Telivo sent me an email to inform me of this, and said to contact them immediately.
I did so, and was told that, when new TLDs such as this become available, there's something of a lag at first in the availability status of newly-registered domains becoming available. Interesting to know. It told me "meyer.tel" was taken, but "david.tel" wasn't. It was wrong.
The nice chap on the other end of the line said Telnic, the company that administers .tel, had probably held david.tel back for some reason or another.
However, it appears that Telivo did nonetheless process my transaction, to the tune of around £35. They say I'll be refunded tomorrow.
Methinks the database systems being used to support the launch of .tel were not up to today's task.
PreviousComments on this post
DAVID.TEL was grabbed by David Jones a Software Engineer at Telnic Limited [djones@telnic.org]. It's one thing grabbing a premium address and another to hide it from inspection on the Telnic Registry!!!
David, unfortunately it sounds like you tried to apply as we went into the quiet period between Landrush and General Availability, which was required to inject the final domains into the SRS prior to opening up for GA. This quiet period meant that some registrars reported all domains available as not being available and all domains on our reserve list (fewer than 100, and including the domains allocated to employees of telnic, not appearing on the main domain list) as available. This was unfortunate and I'm sorry to have raised your hopes up.
David Jones hasn't 'grabbed' david.tel - you'd expect the employees of a company to be able to use their own products as part of the job they do!
Regards,
Justin Hayward
Telnic Limited
justin.tel
Thanks for that Justin - good to know why that happened. I must add, my hopes weren't too elevated in any case - it would be extremely surprising to find "david.tel" genuinely available!
