.mobi .mobi domain names are on the way

[slaughterbeck]

Mobile Top Level Domain (mTLD) today announced the rollout plan for the new mobile-friendly dotmobi domain name. Dotmobi provides the world’s first domain name optimised for consumers using the Internet on a mobile device.

The rollout will commence with the “Sunrise Registration Period” for trademark holders in June 2006, followed by the “General Registration” in September. mTLD is working closely with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), registrars, copyright bodies and site owners to ensure that trademarks are properly protected during the Sunrise Period.

The Sunrise Period will be unique in this case as mTLD plans to offer the mobile industry a week long advance period to register their trade and service marks, at the end of May. This week long period is referred to as the “Limited Industry Sunrise”. Leading mobile industry associations such as the GSM Association (one of mTLD’s founding investors), CTIA – The Wireless Association®, and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) among others have lined up to support the dotmobi sunrise for their membership.

“Dotmobi’s sunrise launch is an important milestone in the path towards making internet access from mobile handsets easy, quick, reliable and rewarding,” said Ameet Shah, Chief Strategy and Development Officer of the GSMA. “We are delighted our members have the opportunity to be in at the very start of something very exciting” he added.

“It is through wireless technology that many Americans will experience broadband for the very first time. This announcement is yet another indication of the consumer’s strong desire to access the Internet and other data services wirelessly. Ensuring predictable and reliable Internet access from any device on any network is an important topic for CTIA – The Wireless Association®,” said Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA.

“We are pleased that MMA members will have an opportunity to participate in the dotmobi sunrise registration period. Dotmobi will become a catalyst to simplify the mobile web experience for millions of consumers worldwide,”
said, Laura Marriott, Executive Director of the Mobile Marketing Association.

Neil Edwards, General Manager of mTLD, said, “Dotmobi is the first domain name to garner real support from the some of the world’s leading mobile players and associations. We hope to accelerate the number of mobile-friendly websites available to consumers on the internet in 2006 by inviting companies to register their trade and service marks in the dotmobi
domain.”

After the Limited Industry Sunrise, all companies will be able to register their trade- and service-mark names as a second level dotmobi (e.g.,
myname.mobi) domain name from June to August 2006. Dotmobi will then be available for registration by the general public in September 2006.
Companies and individuals who want to register can get their dotmobi domain names through participating ICANN accredited registrars.

The rollout announcement follows the recent publication of the consultative edition of dotmobi’s Switch On! Web Browsing Guides – handbooks to ensure the best possible internet experience for the mobile user.

Organisations can find additional information as well as view showcase sites by referring to the mTLD site. Many of the companies backing mTLD plan to demonstrate dotmobi-based sites at 3GSM, the mobile industry’s annual conference and exhibition taking place in Barcelona, Spain in February.

For more information on the dotmobi sunrise program check out mtld.mobi.

Source: Net4Now.com

 

[Kate]

Don't want to beat a dead horse but... :]
TLDs like .coop or .museum have been around for a few years. I can't remember stumbling on a single site that use one of these TLDs *yet*.
I guess it says something about what they stand for... pointless TLDs.
Just because you create a new TLD doesn't mean demand will follow or that it will be readily accepted, even with all the advertising and hype.
That being said, I do hope a lot of domain speculators will rush in to grab .mobi names so I will have less competition when hunting .com names

 

[sm]

i cant figure out how folks seem to think that a special extension is needed for accessing webpages specially designed for mobile devices. This is more about the underlying technology, the page markup and similar stuff all of which do not require a special TLD to be used. Also, the strength of internet (as in network based) technologies comes from the fact it can be accessed by heterogeneous devices like PCs, handhelds etc with different OSs without the need to alter in any way the end users perception of the technology being used for accomplishing the distribution of data. There is NO need for a .mobi TLD for an end user any more than there was a need for a .BLOG TLD for distinguishing certain types of websites that were quite different from the others......

This move can only be of benefit to domain traders and land grabbers and no one else... for end users, it can only add to the confusion. All these new TLDs are making the case for .COM even stronger than it was when there were just a handful of TLDs were around...

an interesting article by tim berners lee :
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD

 

[deleted984054565403]

So, if I hold I trademark, in June 2006 I can register domains? I'm considering registering a trademark for my website. If that would make me eligible to register .mobi domains early, I wonder if I could go and register nice keywords... unlikely.

 

[slaughterbeck]

This is more about the underlying technology, the page markup and similar stuff all of which do not require a special TLD to be used.


There is NO need for a .mobi TLD for an end user any more than there was a need for a .BLOG TLD for distinguishing certain types of websites that were quite different from the others......

Make no mistake about it, .mobi is not a necessity. However, why not allow consumers to be able to recognize Web sites specially designed for use by mobile devices?

This move can only be of benefit to domain traders and land grabbers and no one else...

This new domain extension was requested by a group of powerful mobile phone operators and handset makers, which set up a joint venture to encourage companies and Web site designers to create mobile Web pages. Member companies include Hutchison 3, GSM Association, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Telefonica Moviles, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

I don’t think these companies had the domain name community in mind when they initiated this venture, far from it.

If more Web pages are optimized for mobile devices, rather than desktop or laptop computers with larger screens, these companies hope more consumers will upgrade their cell phones.

"As .mobi will encourage the usage of advanced functionalities in mobile devices, the market potential for those devices will increase," they said in a joint statement”.






Best wishes,
Kimmy

 

[mole]

I agree, beck. I know the telecoms industry like the back of my hand and .mobi is a much needed extension to distinguish the wheat from the chaff when accessing the Internet with your mobile.

 

[Zeeble]

I agree with Slaughterbeck. The extension is not useless.

For example:
Ebay will have ebay.mobi for mobile users as a mobile friendly website. It makes perfect sense.

 

[sm]

and what will ebay.mobi correspond to ? ebay.com or ebay.co.uk or ebay.com.au or ebay.ph or ebay.pl .... ?

the more likely scenario will be ebay.co.uk/mobile, ebay.com.au/mobile, ebay.com/mobile etc

TLDs need not be created to distinguish between distinct data delivery formats. That's what a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) could be used for, and would do the job sufficiently well in this case.

then there's the issue of sharing bookmarks and other meta data between your PC and your handheld. Since, the .mobi version of a site would have a different URI for the same content (albeit formatted differently), the sharing of bookmarks, OPML lists, RSS feed URIs etc wouldnt be possible because there would be 2 URIs referencing the same content. This problem of content formatting and presentation could be tackled via better browser softwares in tandem with different styling sheets that would be presented depending upon the device being used to access the content, rather than different URIs for the same content.

taking the all too common scenario of bookmarking webpages on del.icio.us, I would love to share these bookmarks across all devices that I use to access the Internet from, and share this data (which is nothing but a collection of tagged URIs) across all devices, without the need to have multiple URIs referencing the same data (though presented differently).

These issues will not surface in the early adoption phase of this TLD insofar as devlopment goes... but later on, when folks realize that a piece of content is no longer referenceable by a single homogeneous URI nor shareable across .mobi-compatible and .mobi-incompatible devices, issues will start surfacing.

It's not a question of which corporations support this initiative and which dont.. it's a question of device independent content with a 1-1 correspondence with an internet resource and it's identifier, irrespective of how the content is accessed and how it is displayed and formatted.


regards,
sm