Do TEL

Yesterday started the sunrise period on .TEL, a new domain prefix. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) added the .TEL as a TLD (Top Level Domain) on the purpose of serving as a telephone directory. Which means gizmotastic.com would still keep the .COM suffix, but might add gizmotastic.tel to serve as a living virtual phone book for all the phone numbers and extensions of the company, if it had a lot telephones in use.

The sunrise period mean that businesses, trademark owners and the like can register a domain with the .TEL suffix to protect their interest in the name. On February 9, 2009 will begin the “land rush” period where everyone else can then register domains with the .TEL suffix that were not already registered. There will be investors speculating on some of the .TEL domain names to develop out as a website or sell it later on for a profit. The problem that always happens with a new TDL start-up is that a lot trademark owners don’t register the domain during the sunrise period and then send out Cease and Desist letters to the owner that take a gamble on that name.

Should you register the .TEL of your .COM name? The answer lies mainly on the issue that you have a trademark or plan on applying on a trademark for your business or website and you want to protect your brand online. Even if you don’t have a long list of phone numbers you could still forward the domain to your .COM just to save yourself a headache on down the line. The downside to all is that if you register every TDL with your .COM name you will be spending a lot of cash over the course of the year. This all leads to today’s twenty dollar question – Are there too many Top Level Domain suffixes out there? I’d love to hear what you think about this.