Huge Demand for .tel From Registrars as 100 Sign up With Telnic

October 22, 2008; 04:25 AM

NEW YORK, October 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at SYSTEMS 08, Telnic Limited, the Registry Operator for the new .tel Top Level Domain (TLD) announced that one hundred ICANN-accredited registrars had signed an agreement to sell .tel domain names well in advance of its launch.

The one hundredth registrar to sign was Network Solutions, which ranks third largest in the world with the number of domains under management. The first registrar to sign up to distribute .tel was European domain specialist EuroDNS.

"The overwhelmingly positive feedback that we have received from the registrar community about.tel has been spectacular," said Khashayar Mahdavi, CEO of Telnic Limited. "We are delighted that .tel is having such a huge impact well in advance of its commercial availability. It will fundamentally change the way in which people communicate and interact."

Mahdavi added: "What is incredibly rewarding is to see the broad international support .tel has already achieved from countries such as The United States, Germany, The United Kingdom, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Russia and right across Europe, but also in countries such as Malaysia, Romania, Pakistan and Turkey. .tel truly has international appeal."

.tel is also enticing new entrants into the ICANN-accredited registrar community. Organisations such as Digitrad, a French communications provider which offers interactive voice services administrated from the web, will be providing .tel domains to customers in order to deliver integrated communications services on the Internet.

.tel has already been called "game-changing", "the white pages killer" and "the Google of online address books" after Telnic publicly launched the technology enabling the .tel service at DEMOfall in San Diego in September.

Brand owners are already processing the required documentation with Registrars to apply for their trademarks on December 3rd 2008, which is the start of the Sunrise period.

A full list of the registrars that have signed an agreement with Telnic Limited to sell the .tel is available at http://www.telnic.org.

Source: www.prnewswire.com