I applied for a trial vip tel domains two months back and thanks to Mr. Justin Hayward, communications director of Telnic, I got my wish today! So I wasted no time in using this priviledged opportunity to immediately populate my .tel page with my contact information. Check out the screen shot below: ( click the image to get a bigger view)
Firstly, I was surprised of the fact that everything is so easy to use and set-up! I have foregone reading instructions or anything and I was still able to navigate and do everything I wanted with the page. I populated the dashboard with almost all my information. Saved it and tested all the links and everything worked just as I expected. The links launched the particular application to connect with me. Even when I wasn't actually logged in, it still launched it to prompt me to do so.

As somebody who does his most of his work online, I am particularly excited about having a dot tel domain would be able to get me better found online. Dot tel users would be able to store their contact information and KEYWORDS so that people would be able to find them when looked up in search engines. This would be very useful for people who operate local businesses and need/want to be found online.

Say for example you operate a landscaping business in your area. It would definitely be an ace against your competition if customers can Google and find your business listing through your .tel domain by listing your keywords relating to your business of landscaping.

Some of the functionalities of .tel domains will be rolled out in the next few months and soon users will soon be able to enjoy everything from basics to to managing information and accesability. This domain extension should be one of the most important domains to have communications and business wise.

It's never too early to register tel domains, EuroDNS is now accepting pre-registrations from trademark owners for the sunrise period.

For those of you looking to register your .tel domains soon, here's a small price comparison I made between EuroDNS and Webnames.ca which are probably the 2 best places you can get .tel domains moving forward.

But first, let me tell you that similar to other domain extension launchings, the .tel will be in the same Sunrise-Landrush-General Registration format. The sunrise period is for trademark owners only. Landrush period is the all important first-come first-served basis while the General Registration period is when registration would be open to everybody.

Prices are a little stiff for these .tel domains but there would be no doubt that they will be very good domain investments especially those short generic ones and some of them famous and general terms.

Here's my price comparison:

Sunrise Period (minimum 3 years initial registration) starting December 3, 2008
EuroDNS - US$374
Webnames.ca - US$399

Landrush Period (minimum 3 years initial registration) starts February 3, 2009
EuroDNS - US$445
Webnames.ca - US$375

General Registration (minimum 1 year initial registration) starts March 24, 2009
EuroDNS - US$23
Webnames.ca - US$19.99

If you've got a trademark, pre-register .tel with EuroDNS now and trust me you would be doing yourself a favor by avoiding domain squatters to do it for you and take advantage of your missed opportunity.