I think there is plenty of room for some refinement to simplify the experience. For example, it’d be nice to see a tighter integration between the TelProxy (web frontend), TelHosting (the place you manage your records) and TelFriends (used for privacy).

Maybe if your opinions develop further you could post a follow-up

- Andy.

To say the truth my idea was to offer pluses and minuses of the .tel services. I can say, that it is the concept of my entire blog. Everything has a bright side and the dark side. And I want to show both. And it is for the reader and for potential costumer to decide to accept or refuse a service.

Well, talking about myself, I’am on the .tel’s side. The thing I like the most is its simplicity and tendence of unifying information. And the fair of sharing your private data is perverted. You may write information, which you want. It’s your choice.

I just have a few quick points to make in response:

Advantage 1. Currently the major search engines appear to treat .tel domains in the same way they treat other gTLDs. Special purpose .tel search engines also exist, and new ones are being developed.

Advantage 5. Exactly Mobile networks are inherently latent, which means browsing the web can be frustratingly slow when all you want is a simple piece of contact information, let alone browsing through a directory structure. .tel apps can pull this data straight from your local DNS resolver, which may already have a cached copy, meaning you get what you want in milliseconds rather than seconds.

There are apps available for the iPhone and Blackberry, and more on the way. See http://www.telnic.org/community-applications.html and http://www.hornethub.com/

Disadvantage 1. My honest opinion is that the big search giants will be too slow to react to .tel and special purpose search engines will present the best solution. But I should declare my interest and say that I’m working on one myself

Disadvantage 2. If myname.tel weren’t available then I’d have a couple of other names lined up that I’d be happy to use, and I think other people have similar strategies that they’re comfortable with. Google Mail/Skype/AOL namespaces each include hundreds of millions of names now.

Disadvantage 3. Some people dislike the TelProxy template, but keep an eye out for changes – I’d personally like to see a record type for avatar pointers, and others have their own suggestions. Telnic is very receptive to feedback from the community.

Disadvantage 4. Au contraire, it’s the perfect choice for small businesses .tel domains are simple to set up, and the cost of ownership is much lower compared to traditional domains since there is no development or hosting required. See what George Moen (President of Blenz Coffee) said about it: http://georgemoen.com/?p=55

Disadvantage 5. You are in complete ownership and control of your data; it’s stored directly in the DNS. You’re free to use any TelHosting provider you like, and you could even run your own TelHosting-accredited nameservers if you wanted to. Everything is open.

I hope I may have assuaged some of your doubts.

- Andy.