.tel

A top level Internet domain used to provide a single point of contact for a company or individual from any computer or mobile device. Scheduled for launch in 2009 by Telnic Ltd., London, England (www.telnic.org), which handles the root servers, .tel names can be registered with numerous accredited registrars around the world.

The .tel domain is the first time the Internet's domain name system (DNS) is used to store information rather than convert alphabetic names to numeric addresses (see DNS). This information can be integrated into any Web site, but .tel is not used for Web server addresses. Typing myname.tel into a browser retrieves only contact information.

Companies and Individuals
A company can use it to store its Web address along with phone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses for all departments and branch offices. Individuals can use a .tel name without any presence on the Web, and they can require that users have passwords to obtain private data. Their data can include home and work phone numbers, e-mail addresses and other identifiers such as IM, Skype and social network IDs. Virtually any data a company or person wishes to include can be made part of a .tel registration and queried by others based on keywords. See Internet domain names.