Mobile Industry Seeks its Own Web Domain Name

Leading companies from the mobile industry have signed a memorandum of understanding to apply for a mobile Top Level Domain ("mobile TLD") from the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) during the current application round, which closes March 15. If the application is successful and the mobile TLD is granted by ICANN, the industry leaders have agreed to form a new joint venture to manage the mobile TLD. A mobile TLD would be a key step in bridging the world of mobility and the Internet to the benefit of customers and the entire mobile industry.

A mobile TLD on the Internet creates the opportunity to streamline the deployment of new Internet sites optimized for mobile usage. This effort is driven by the aim of simplifying the Internet experience for mobile subscribers and increasing the ease of use and speed of delivery of mobile Internet services.

The participating companies are Microsoft, Nokia, Vodafone, 3, GSM Association, HP, Orange, Samsung Electronics and Sun Microsystems. These companies and others that will join over the coming months represent software developers, device manufacturers, network operators, infrastructure providers and content providers.

Under the terms of the memorandum of understanding, the companies intend to form a registry company to manage the distribution of the new mobile TLD names. The mobile TLD would be designed to enable efficient application and network services and reliability for mobile customers and service providers. The registry company will seek participation of additional, members to ensure broad customer and industry input.

It is not clear though what the difference will be between a .mobile WAP site and a .com WAP site. Surely the point of convergence is to make internet access agnostic to the technology used, and requiring a wireless device to access a different domain name from a normal PC based service would appear to defeat that goal."

Posted to the site on 11th March 2004