The 1990s saw a humongous rush to secure an attractive and promising domain names. ‘Squatting’ was more pronounced for domain name registrations which went on to became a lucrative business opportunity.

Hoping that a worthy buyer will come along and make good the exorbitant price tag they carried. Quite a few did, like business.com, which went under the hammer for $7.5 million in 1999. More recently creditcards.com found a buyer at $2.75 million. Most of these were sold before the dot-com burst in 2001. Most of the domains names registered worldwide are under .com suffix, while .net comes a distant second.

This low investment, effortless business opportunity for several wannabe entrepreneurs across the globe has seen it charm fade away. This received a further blow, when last year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which regulates top-level domain names, announced that it would open up the system to allow any suffix.

More recently, in Feb 2009, the “.tel” (touted to be world’s largest phone book ) was launched where this was available on first come first served basis, which meant registration of domains under the nose of popular establishments, vis-a-vis bmw.com etc. For those of you beginning to rush to check on the more recognisable names, NASA, FBI, Microsoft, IBM, Google and so on, don’t fret, as they have already secured their “.tel” addresses, earlier this year, while some of the popular Indian names, like “rediff.tel”, “ndtv.tel”, etc. are still up for grabs!

However, this needs to be bought for a minimum of 3 years initially costing $327 to $375 based on the country and domain registrar you register from. From 23rd March, .tel domains would be registered at $20 a year.

“.tel is your place on the internet, which will act like a switchboard.” said Kash Madhavi, the chief executive of Telnic, the London-based company that runs the .tel registry. “You can say, ‘Here are my Facebook details, here is my mobile number, and people will always be able to find you.” In the near future these will become more valuable when the need for mobile content increases further and a stripped-down web pages made available through mobile phones such as Blackberry, Apple iPhone etc.

Happy buying, if you foresee a big moolah, in this.

Image Credit: Existentist

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