.TEL General Availability is just around the corner

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By: Adam Eisner on March 23rd, 2009
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: .TEL, Domains Service
Comments: 4

Since late last year, we’ve been talking about .TEL, the newest Global Top-level Domain (gTLD). Over the past few months, .TEL has gone from the Sunrise period to Landrush. During those times, trademark holders and then anyone who wished to register .TEL domains at a premium price could apply to own .TEL domains.

Now, we’re just a couple of days away from General Availability (GA) when the floodgates will be opened and everyone will be able to register their .TEL domain for the usual yearly registration fee of $8/domain year, plus the ICANN Fee of $0.20 and your OpenSRS Management Fee.

General Availability for .TEL begins officially on March 24th, 2009 at 15:00 GMT/UTC and as with the other two launch events, domains will be awarded on a first come, first served basis. .TEL Registrations will be available via the RWI and API at that time. Please note that there is a 15-hour blackout period between the closing of Landrush at 23:59 UTC/GMT on March 23rd, 2009 and the opening of the Registry for GA.

Resellers using OpenSRS Storefront may also want to sell .TEL domains and .TEL will be available in Storefront, although it will be disabled by default. You’ll need to enable it within the Storefront Manager.

Keep in mind that as Resellers, you are responsible for supporting your customers for .TEL domains and TelHosting. If you have any questions about how TelHosting works, Telnic provides quite a bit of information about the platform at their website. We suggest that you make yourself aware of how the platform and the
technology work.

A great way to learn about .TEL is to register your own .TEL domain and try it out. This can also provide a showcase for your customers that will demonstrate the benefits of .TEL and what it offers.

You may also wish to view the archive of the webinar that we held along with Telnic representatives a few months back. And, as usual, more information on .TEL can be found in our documentation.

You should be telling your customers about .TEL and explaining how it works. Here’s some reasons why everyone should purchase .TEL domains:

1. They are easy to use. You don’t need any web-design skills, or pay for hosting. Everything is saved within the innovative .TEL system.
2. They help people get found online. You can easily publish your contact information including social network profiles, email addresses and even your exact location. And you can protect any or all of that information using the privacy features built into .TEL.
3. They help grow your business. .TEL is accessible from the web, via any browser, and even through the iPhone, BlackBerry or other mobile internet devices like mobile phones.
4. They will boost your search ranking. .Tel listings are optimized for search engines like Google and Yahoo Search.
5. They can be used with your existing website. instead of a contact page, link to your .TEL domain and take advantage of the real-time changes and easy updates that .TEL provides.

The launch of .TEL has been interesting to watch, and now as GA approaches, we’re seeing lots of momentum around this new gTLD. Make sure you are a part of it.