Do you really need to register your name under .tel?

We've turned up .tel registrations now that they've gone realtime and the initial registry implosion has stabilized. You may have noticed a distinct lack of urgency from us to light a fire under your keester to go register your name under .tel right now before somebody else takes it.

As we outlined previously, we find the hoopla around new top-level domain rollouts both tiresome and for the majority of domain holders, unnecessary. So we have a policy here that we generally a) don't launch the new TLD until it goes realtime and is considered "stable" and b) we don't try to whip our users into a hysterical frenzy ahead of time to register their domains under every new TLD.

The fact is, in the future there will be more top-level-domains, a lot more. So many of them that between obvious typos of one's domain, one's core domain or domains, and one's local geographic top-level domain, it will be a fool's errand to try and register your name under every new TLD that comes along just for the sake of "defending your mark".

The other problem is, .tel is severely crippled

While we do find .tel slightly unique in the realm of new TLDs because it actually exists for a reason: to cultivate internet telephony usage. This isn't some country-code ccTLD hiring out their namespace under some made-up reason (.me, .tv, .ws, et al) to draw in foreign registrants, it's an actual TLD geared toward SIP, VOIP and telephony and exists for that reason.

But .tel isn't doing anything under the space that can't be done under any other domain name with the appropriate use of SRV or NAPTR records and to actually make matters worse, you are forced to use their nameservers and your domains are under an Acceptable Use Policy which forces you to use the name for certain things (basically as a "contact" switch rather than a "content" page).

While the objective may be laudable: giving a TLD an actual raison d'etre beyond "register your name before somebody else does!", we don't like that you're forced to use their nameservers and don't have total latitude with your .tel domains. It runs contrary to the ethos behind easyDNS which was, and still is to drive a stake through the heart of lock-in. (It's not like we force everybody who registers a domain through us to use our nameservers because we're an outsourced DNS host, in fact we even allow our members to mirror their DNS from our nameservers from outside DNS hosts).


As such we have not become directly accredited under .tel, instead we're supporting them through our OpenSRS reseller tag, but the functionality is transparent.

Most of you reading this probably have no compelling reason to register your name under .tel unless 1) you like the TLD or 2) you have operations in the IP telephony space that would make sense segmenting under a .tel name and 3) you don't mind the crippled functionality and lock-in.