New Domain Is Proposed

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

New Domain Is Proposed

March 11, 2004
 By CHRIS OAKES




International Herald Tribune

PARIS, March 10 - In a sign that the wireless Internet is
coming of age, Nokia, Vodafone, Microsoft and six other
technology and telecommunications companies joined
Wednesday to propose the equivalent of a .mobile Internet
address category for mobile Web access.

The nine companies, which also include Hewlett-Packard, the
Orange unit of France Télécom and Samsung Electronics,
announced their application for a mobile-specific domain in
London. The actual name for the address suffix has yet to
be determined, but would indicate a wireless theme, like
.mobile or .phone, the group said.

Cellphones and hand-held organizers are increasingly being
made with the ability to gain access to Internet sites and
services, like weather forecasts or stock prices, and the
telecommunications industry is counting on these services
to generate higher revenue. But their tiny screens have
made conventional Web pages impossible to see and use. One
standard adopted to reformat such pages, called Wireless
ApplicaTion Protocol, has helped the miniaturization, but
not all sites have been converted.

The application, submitted to the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, the overseer of the
Internet's address system, calls for a new, for-profit
joint venture set up by the companies to manage the mobile
registry. Names purchased from the company would explicitly
point to wireless-focused domains, making the registry a
new type of electronic postal code on the Internet.

"If you went onto a .mobile site, that site would be
specifically tailored for use by a mobile device," a
Vodafone spokesman said, emphasizing that the .mobile name
was only hypothetical. "The whole site would have been
organized for speed of download, ease of use and
simplicity."

The companies could require any name registered under the
new address heading to have a mobile-specific purpose. By
contrast, names registered for use with .com, .net and
other generic endings need not have any specific thematic
purpose.

"You could actually put in place policies that are specific
to these services that the domain is supposed to go after,"
said Michael Wehrs, director of mobile devices standards
and technology at Microsoft.

"The idea is to positively influence the services of
participating sites," he added, not to be exclusionary.

After Icann's current application round closes on March 16,
independent evaluators will examine the proposals. The
technology and telecommunications group expects the
application process to take three to six months, and
services based on the new address, if approved, might
arrive by the first half of 2005.

"There's a lot of momentum behind it," said Jessica
Figueras of Ovum, a consultancy in London. "It's certainly
a good thing to do. The question is how much can they
encourage mobile-friendly sites.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/technology/11wire.html?ex=1080007209&ei=1&en=41e2670e966db70b 

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