Is it sensible to think of tel and mobi as business functions?
Absolutely yes. As I noted it, there are at least two possiblities:
- .tel is accepted as the TLD of the ITU-T Sector's members. The same as for .aero. And .mobi is for all the companies, services, designers interested in mobile product, services etc.
- .tel is reserved to a class of users froming an "externet", ie. a class of users with special relations/access terms. This can be an economical model (rates), this can be a way of behaving (accepting or not VoSpam), etc. This however calls for a large number of new architectural concepts and naming semantic to be discussed and agreed upon.
But in both cases, it is likely it would then be premature to give away such mnemonics as "tel" and "mobi" before a wide debate. ITU expressed that in their letter of 2000 to ICANN. ICANN was wise to agree. I think not much has changed.
But would remain the IDNA aspect (LHS is not solved yet!), the co-registry/virtual zone need to address the support of an _existing_ and generalized non Internet industry, and the real life feed-back. Do you really think non-US Govs, ITU, users, etc. will take ICANN and IETF seriously if they give away a $ 6 yearly tax on 1.3 billion mobiles and more telephone sets, managed by State controlled corporations or monopolies, to a single private US interest? If the root was the "joke of the XXth century" (European Gov top expet's comment), this would be the joke of the XXIth century.
The slippery slope is the risk that ICANN tries (or is put under pressures to try) that "coup" for political/commercial reasons. I think IETF is here to say where are the technical problems to prevent that temptation.
Another point, I did not rise, is that ".tel" and ".mobi" would obviously immediately lead to propositions such as ".tel1", ".mob1", ".phone", etc. etc. The size of the existing market and its technical sophistication would certainly push imaginations a lot and things IAB did not consider for 20 years would be implemented in chaos in months. There would be scores of New.nets.
Just consider that ".sms" is the golden mine of today and is LOCAL. Any ISP alliance can start it today and build an externet (open virtual netwok) using ULDs (User level domains made of the alias couple of an SLD and of a local TLD) that will work very well.
IAB has not published an architecture for the internetting and ICANN has contained the number of TLDs. This has not permitted the world to get a technical reference nor to establish commonly agreed best practices. Nevertheless common sense remains until this may be corrected within the global convergence/stabilization of the digital continuity.
jfc
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