ICANN approves .tel domain names

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has finally given approval for the new top-level domain with the suffix.tel.

The contract to manage these domain names has been given to Telnic Ltd., an Internet communications company based in London.

The decision was taken last week but the controversy surrounding the rejection of the .xxx based domain names somewhat downplayed the importance of this announcement.

These new .tel based domains should be available by next year and the details on the registration process should be out sometime in the coming weeks on the company’s website.

There would be a “sunrise” period to allow public bodies and business trademark holders with prior rights to register their domains. After that, anyone interested would be allowed to purchase their choice of domain names with the .tel suffix.

Telnic has been given the contract to manage these domain names for a period of 10 years.