Domian names/Email addresses instead of phone numbers

**Diabro** · 03-29-2010, 09:05 AM

I am not sure how viable this is and I am a little surprised that Google has not tried this yet but I think if it happened it would increase the value of domain names.

I feel that if people could use an email address or assign a domain name to their phone(s) or there was a system that translates domain names into phone numbers similar to what DNS does for IP there would be a significant increase in value of a large amount of domain names. With most telephone traffic being sent over IP at some point this just seems natural.

People already use email addresses for chat so this would be a natural carry over.

Any thoughts?

**Bodis.com** · 03-29-2010, 07:16 PM

Quite an interesting and actually a good idea. But how do you provide backward compatibility to those that want to retain their old phone number?

**Diabro** · 03-29-2010, 07:45 PM

It could be worked, at least at first, like DNS. As it stands now you can type in the IP address of any site instead of the domain name. The same with a phone number. The advantage being you can keep your domain name or email address as long as you "own" it.

**urlurl** · 03-29-2010, 08:18 PM

you would need to introduce a seperate extension to take care of the amount of numbers needed (like a .tel or .phone or .call) + country code (.ca, .us, .mx, etc.) I think it would work best like this.

Companyname.phone.ca

or

companyname.call.ca

**south** · 03-29-2010, 09:09 PM

Originally Posted by Diabro

It could be worked, at least at first, like DNS. As it stands now you can type in the IP address of any site instead of the domain name. The same with a phone number. The advantage being you can keep your domain name or email address as long as you "own" it.

Yes & no. Most of us running our own servers use many virtual hosts on one IP.

Interesting idea nonetheless. My fear is that the reverse could happen. Instead of domains, the internet could be broken down into numbers. In which case, I feel domains would also be more valuable, as it would be difficult to advertise "come to 67.195.160.76, we have the best search" or whatever.

**Diabro** · 03-29-2010, 09:32 PM

Originally Posted by south

Yes & no. Most of us running our own servers use many virtual hosts on one IP.

Yes, that is because it is harder to get static IP addresses and until IPV6 not everyone can have a static. If people have the phone number then that is the equivalent of a static. I believe you can also assign more than one phone to the same number.

Originally Posted by south

Interesting idea nonetheless. My fear is that the reverse could happen. Instead of domains, the internet could be broken down into numbers. In which case, I feel domains would also be more valuable, as it would be difficult to advertise "come to 67.195.160.76, we have the best search" or whatever.

The internet is already broken down into numbers. DNS is the solution to the problem of "come to 67.195.160.76, we have the best search".

---------- Post added at 10:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:29 PM ----------

Originally Posted by urlurl

you would need to introduce a seperate extension to take care of the amount of numbers needed (like a .tel or .phone or .call) + country code (.ca, .us, .mx, etc.) I think it would work best like this.

Companyname.phone.ca

or

companyname.call.ca

I disagree. Not every number needs to have a name, not every IP address does, and there are more available names than numbers as it stands now.

**urlurl** · 03-29-2010, 09:50 PM

true - there are more than enough names to go around but not as many short names. Also, if i had a company i would want a seperate extension to distinguish it as a phone/contact number

ie

IBM(dot)com - for my web site
erwerwr@IBM - for email
IBM.phone - for calling

**south** · 03-29-2010, 10:29 PM

Originally Posted by Diabro

The internet is already broken down into numbers. DNS is the solution to the problem of "come to 67.195.160.76, we have the best search".[COLOR="red"]

Correct. Which is precisely why names would be more valuable in this scenario, at least names people would want.

Another example is email addresses. I think it would be more likely to have an email address connected to a phone number rather than a domain name. Notice that the big players are already doing this by providing "free" email addresses that people will keep for an indefinite period of time, thus acquiring a potential customer who will be very loyal to their account, of not the providing company. They are already beginning to monetize these by placing ads in or next to the email.

**Diabro** · 03-30-2010, 06:24 AM

Originally Posted by urlurl

true - there are more than enough names to go around but not as many short names.

This is the same as it is with email right now so I do not understand your point.

Originally Posted by urlurl

Also, if i had a company i would want a seperate extension to distinguish it as a phone/contact number

ie

IBM(dot)com - for my web site
erwerwr@IBM - for email
IBM.phone - for calling

In your scenario above email and web site are the same domain. IBM.COM and there are no problems. With your above example phone.IBM.com would be more logical than what you suggest. Not only can a webserver handle HTML but it can also handle other protocols such as FTP. Your browser will most probably default to http but if the server is setup you could also type in ftp for example.

I fear you are looking at this from the perspective of e new land rush and not the way things work even now.

---------- Post added at 07:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:19 AM ----------

Originally Posted by south

Correct. Which is precisely why names would be more valuable in this scenario, at least names people would want.

Another example is email addresses. I think it would be more likely to have an email address connected to a phone number rather than a domain name. Notice that the big players are already doing this by providing "free" email addresses that people will keep for an indefinite period of time, thus acquiring a potential customer who will be very loyal to their account, of not the providing company. They are already beginning to monetize these by placing ads in or next to the email.

Do you have an example of these "free" email addresses?

At this moment phone numbers are not a routable protocol so they are most probably using IP or DNS along the line. I personally would rather see domain names used.

**south** · 03-30-2010, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by Diabro

Do you have an example of these "free" email addresses?

At this moment phone numbers are not a routable protocol so they are most probably using IP or DNS along the line. I personally would rather see domain names used.

I was just referring to services such as gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, etc..

**Diabro** · 03-30-2010, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by south

I was just referring to services such as gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, etc..

Ahhh, I thought you were talking about phone companies. Cool. The thing I do not like about free email services is that the company owns the domain. They could go out of business or stop supporting it. There are also privacy concerns. My VoIP system sends attachments to my email and I can listen to them on my cell which is cool.

Smart phones can be web servers now so I would like to see mainstream devices support this and be able to work in a more fluid way.

I think if domain names could and were used more that it would increase the value of good domains.