Comment about Renewal of .TEL Registry Agreement

[Dan Prather <dprather@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To:          ICANN Governing Board for Registry Renewals

From:     Dan Prather, President
                Alliance Information Services

Re:          Renewal of the .Tel Registry Agreement

Date:      September 12, 2016


WHAT IS .TEL
The .Tel extension was designed to simplify communications for businesses and 
their customers.   Unlike any other domain extension in existence today:


1.       .Tel is about communications and not web content

2.       .Tel allows owners to share access to communication, social and 
content endpoints as a service.

3.       .Tel is the only gTLD that uses the system behind the web (DNS) to 
store information in the web without having to have a website or data 
store/database.
               -Stored information can be in forms to include:  Text, URL's, 
URI's, and other communication strings as Endpoints

4.       .Tel links domain names to small amounts of data stored in the DNS to 
provide a quicker way of delivering information to internet enabled devices.

5.       .Tel acts like an personal address book or directory for the business 
or person leveraging the assigned domain as their method of branded endpoint 
data dissemination.

6.       .Tel provides a cost effective way publish and access endpoint 
information.

7.       .Tel provides a centralized hosted frontend platform to provide data 
management for consistently deliver structured and optimized data.

.Tel is in fact a structured publishing and information service that just 
happens to be the internet's most unique domain extension positioned for 
alignment industry adoption to include:


1.       Internet of Things

2.       Evolution of Search

3.       Marketing Technology

4.       Geo and Proximal Web Communications

INDUSTRY ADOPTION (My Observations)
Making personal and business investment in .Tel since its launch date in 2009, 
I like many have exhausted heavy resources into the extension as an asset and 
the extension as a service.  Over the years, like any investment or business 
development trek, I have seen success and failure.  A lite investor and 
developer with other extensions to include .com, .net and org - I have come to 
respect the paradigms that we engage in and entrust our capabilities to produce 
profitable outcomes.   Looking outward, I have observed and concluded the 
following within the user areas:


1.       Domainers
Adoption by the majority of internet domain investors (Domainer) did not catch 
on for the same reason so many other domains other than .Com do:
        --Market value
        --End User perception
        --Credibility
        --Service Knowledge

The average Domainer prefers to invest low and flip high.  That is a model that 
has worked well for decades.  .Tel is designed as a Service with 
infrastructure, no other TLD is designed with patented architecture to provide 
this defined level of turnkey service.


2.       End Users
Adoption by end users has been mixed depending on the type of end user you are.

End User 1:  Personal Users- Has a difficult time from what I have seen over 
the last seven years because most of them discover that they are not as 
organized with their own data points to satisfactorily organize, populate and 
maintain the service platform provided by .Tel.

End User 2:  Business Users- Make investments to build strategies around how to 
augment or build their .Telcommunications footprint.  Significant amounts of 
time with planning, designing and coordinating the .Tel is treated as a defined 
project to produce a business solution.

In the end, business users find more value due to the project investment made 
in using the .Tel foundation as an approach to help them build out, better 
define and understand the .Telcommunications component of their business

GROUPS AND FORUMS

There are several user groups and forums that comment about .Tel.   Over the 
past couple of years, a majority of the negative propaganda has resulted in 
personal frustration by some users that I personally have not found 
constructive to the ongoing promotion and development of .Tel as a Gtld 
"Service with Infrastructure."

A majority of the frustrated user base has been predominantly "Domainer" & "End 
User 1" level.  Plenty of personal investment made with an unfair expectation 
placed on the Registry to provide web services functionality and feature sets 
that may not align with the capability of lowest common denominator users 
globally that operate within different technical parameters and guidelines.

AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

The majority of frustration with the Registry began when consistent 
communications slowed down in late 2011 to mid-2012 leaving the user base in 
the dark with regards to the stability of the company and most importantly the 
platform.


1.       Accepting that .Tel is a "Service" then it is only fair that 
consistent monthly communications to registrants regarding updates, upgrades, 
outages, etc. be a standard practice.

2.       An international oversight and Audit committee be established by IANA 
to review the .Tel development roadmap, maintenance approaches and structural 
alignment with ongoing internet related efforts.

3.       A third party governing board assigned by ICANN be assigned to Audit 
and Report on key Registry activities to ensure uncompromised operations to 
include process, communications, consistencies, etc.

SUMMARY

Telnic like any business has many issues and successes.  Not clear on the 
organizational make-up or internal operations of the agency, I am in no 
position to judge the management of the agency.   Based on that statement, I 
suggest consideration of the Areas for Improvement for Telnic to become the 
example TLD and operator with Infrastructure as a Service in mind for a world 
focused on Big Data, Mobile Now, Access Anywhere and Shared Data Access.

Telnic as an operator has successfully met the objective for providing public 
access to register .Tel domains and have access to the Infrastructure as a 
Service.

In closure, I recommend Telnic's Renewal of the .Tel Registry Agreement with 
.Tel continuing to operate with its unique model of providing Infrastructure as 
a Service.

I do NOT recommend the opening up of the .Tel "A" Record  or operation of .Tel 
as an open TLD for regular web content development similar to that of other 
TLDs (general, sponsored or county code).


Respectfully Submitted,

Dan Prather, President
Alliance Information Services
PO Box 1286, Columbia, SC 29202 USA
+1 (803) 750-8855 x-1000
Managed IT, TelPowered Advertising  & Domain Management

Visit www.DanPrather.com<http://www.danprather.com/> for up to date contact 
information and ways to connect with me.

Dan Prather is President at Alliance Information Services, where professionals, 
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