Numeric Only Domains Coming to .Tel

777.tel on its way.

Soon you’ll be able to register .tel domain names existing solely of two or more digits.

This week ICANN’s Board of Directors agreed to amend its registry agreement with Telnic to allow for the numeric domain names.

Telnic requested the change through the Registry Service Evaluation Policy (RSEP) process, which opened up the proposal to public comments.

Go Daddy filed comments opposed to Telnic’s plan. The registrar argued that the change was not a new “registry service” and was a “fundamental change” to .tel’s charter.

Go Daddy said that this change was unfair to another applicant that tried to get .tel, and thus the contract should be rebidded:

We believe that this request cannot be granted without requiring the rebidding of the .tel sTLD itself. It is unfair to other applicants and potential applicants to allow an sTLD to change its purpose after the
fact. Telnic’s promise not to allow numeric only second level registrations was a fundamental aspect of its application and, if we understand the decision correctly, a primary reason why .tel was awarded to Telnic and not Pulver (numeric only second level names were fundamental to Pulver’s application for .tel at the same time).

Although I’m not sure how much Go Daddy cared about .tel’s request (Go Daddy doesn’t offer .tel domain names), it appeared to be raising a red flag about other registries changing their plans:

We believe that certain other recent requests under the guise of the RSEP by sTLDs were also likely inappropriate for similar reasons and we are concerned about what appears to be a growing trend to misuse the RSEP. We hope our comments will encourage Staff and Board to review these requests more critically in the future.

Also on this week’s board agenda was to approve number-only .name domain names, but I cannot find a resolution on this topic. [Update: the board deferred on number-only .name domains.]