closed Digital.tel Have i wasted my money?

[condoleezza]

Digital.tel

Have i wasted my money?

 

[Tim Schoon]

IMO - yes

 

[condoleezza]

IMO - yes

Thank you Toilet-Monster for your opinion.

May i ask if it is the name Digital or the extension .tel? and can you elaborate on your reasoning behind your opinion please?

Kind regards

Any other opinions greatly appreciated

 

[ecomindia]

too early 4 .tel !
give it some time to breathe...

let's see for 3 months more how the extn go..

name is good , all depends on tld marketability...

 

[condoleezza]

Thanks for your advice ecomindia.

Does anyone know the approx level of registrations thus far please?

 

[Sonny Banks]

Yes .tel is crap

 

[anatoly]

i thought the point of .tel would be a digital phone book, that is to say you can only have phone numbers on there ( i am sure you allready know that)

so, while digital.tel is a nice hack, you wouldn't be able to use it as such.....right ?

 

[ecomindia]

Yes .tel is crap

will definitely accept your words if this domain is not sold in 1 year to a good telecom company

 

[ftaylor]

Well, you'd have to convince the telephone company that there was value in what is basically an online contact form (without the form).

 

[condoleezza]

Thanks to everyone posting. Nice to get a variation of opinions.

Has anyone else bought any .tel domains to date?

 

[katherine]

I like the combo but all .tel are equally useless.
IMO your only hope is to flip it fast - if at all possible.
Fortunately you didn't purchase dozens.
Good luck

 

[VirtualT]

Nice name but worthless on the reseller market at the moment.

Might be one to hold on to.

 

[Marketing Guru]

Personally, I think .tel is a much better term for an extension than .mobi, and I wish they had launched it instead of .mobi as a full-fledged TLD in the first place. Mobi is a made up term, whereas people have been putting Tel: on their business cards for decades.

But .Tel is not the same product as other TLDs. Right now, you can only have a single template that lives on their DNS, no development allowed. It's an entire TLD that serves no other purpose than to be an overpriced, overcomplicated, incomplete phone book.

Think about it. How much chance would print phone books have had if they charged each phone number holder $15 just to be listed? None at all, because they would have started with zero listings and never been able to build momentum because no one would use such an incomplete product. The phone book business model is to give away the listings for free so they have a complete useful product, then sell enhanced listings and ads.

.Tel is a solution looking for a problem.

So I have a hunch that the rules for .tel will change once the concept falls flat. Like any startup they might try to change their business model.

Perhaps the change that will come to .Tel is to give the listings away for free, then sell ads on peoples personal contact pages. But that service is already offered on countless online phonebooks.

If the concept fails, then I think it is just as likely they will open up the DNS for transfers and full development.

There is precident for changing the rules of a TLD: .Org was originally only for non-profits, and you had to prove your status to get the ext. That rule changed, and it is now available for anyone to register. Granted, .tel's entire framework would have to be changed, not just a registration rule. But if the alternative is bankruptcy, I think anything's possible.

I think digital is a great word, so if I owned it I would do some research into this possibility and actually hold on to it rather than flip it for a few bucks.

That said, I haven't registered any and don't plan to. Perhaps I'll miss the boat on another ext launch -- I wish I had been fonder of .info when it first launched. Or perhaps I'll save a load of cash by sitting it out. I keep looking into the future, perhaps the very near future, when several hundred new tld's are launched.

Just another random opinion, worth as much as the electrons its imprinted on.

- MG

 

[condoleezza]

Thank you Marketing Guru for your generous contribution. I will take your advice and sit on it for a while.

It would be nice to hear from other domainers who have registered a .tel domain and have an insight into their train of thought. Kind regards

 

[DomainsInc]

Good name however .tel is seems to be a useless tld. Who wants a domain where they are only allowed to put contact info on it?

 

[katherine]

It is not impossible that telnic will change their business model at a later stage.
Just like .pro did after operating at a loss for years.

Now imagine you have a .tel which works like any domain. What makes it special or fashionable ? What you have is just another extension without a purpose.

 

[Ervin]

.Tel is still too early and it is too expensive

 

[Arrogance]

Still early on, hold for the future

 

[Theo]

Warning to all .tel prospective buyers:

You can't set it up as a regular web site, you can't park it. You can have contact info on it, emails, phone numbers etc. In other words: don't buy to resell it, because only an end-user MIGHT be enticed to use an overly glorified Yellow Pages entry as a link to their own site.

Not convinced? View video at http://www2.telnic.org/business-simulator.html and http://www2.telnic.org/business-movie.html

PS Cool music in the video.

 

[ftaylor]

http://www.dnforum.com/f570/tel-fail-thread-348200.html