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Objection to the .MOBI TLD Proposal

  • To: stld-rfp-mobi@xxxxxxxxx
  • Subject: Objection to the .MOBI TLD Proposal
  • From: Ray Anderson <ray@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 15:25:32 +0100


Bango.net is a provider of services to more than 5,000 mobile content providers. They used our
technology and services to interact with more than 17million users during 2003, including more than
800,000 paying users - through Mobile phones - in more than 141 countries worldwide.

We are a business partner of Vodafone, O2, Telefonica, Orange, T-Mobile, Nokia, Sony Ericsson,
Openwave, Microsoft and many other mobile operators and infrastructure providers.

On behalf of Bango, thousands of our Content Provider partners, and the billions of
future users of mobile devices, we request that ICANN swiftly rejects this proposal.

The emergence of a ".mobi" TLD will delay the support for mobile devices for several reasons,
and will harm a fast growing industry.

(1) A different TLD will confuse users.

Users are being educated to enter URL's into their browser.  There are now more browsers
connected to the internet through mobile phones than through PC's (although usage is far less).

A content provider should be able to promote ONE "URL" and expect it will work through all devices.

Assuming ".MOBI" founders spend time and money educating end users that ,MOBI means something,
what then does "not .MOBI" mean?   Companies can support mobile devices today from their existing domains.
Some choose to, others do not.

When Nokia promotes their game, would they say:
Visit www.nokiagame.com from a PC or www.nokiagame.mobi from your Phone?
Best to simply make www.nokiagame.com work from all potential devices.

The W3C already provides for a HTTP_ACCEPT header to allow the same URL to be used across
many device types - hiding complexity from users.

(2) A different TLD "in progress" will give the sponsors a reason to
delay "walking the talk"  in supporting today's Mobile devices. 

For market growth and user satisfaction, it is important that as many services as possible are made available to
mobile users, whatever device type they have. Things should be Reliable and easy.  It is very strange that most
of the sponsors of this "scheme", after several years, have still not embraced mobile devices with their own
Internet sites.

Example:

You are reading the (printed)  TLD proposal document in a cafe.  You would like to know more about the
participating companies.     You enter  the "URL" given by each company into your typical (WAP) phone:

www.vodafone.com  WORKS VERY WELL  - High Satisfaction
 - How are you? Welcome to the world's largest mobile community

All the others(tested on April 21st 2004) fail to provide any useful information,
giving complicated error messages or gobledeygook:

http://www.Three.com/  HTTP Error : 406 (No acceptable objects were found)
www.gsmworld.com  Not wml content :
www.hp.com   FAILED Not WML content:
http://www.microsoft.com/ FAILED Not WML content:
www.orange.com  Appears to deliver an "empty" WAP page
www.o2.co.uk  FAILED  Not WML content: Vignette V/5
www.sun.com FAILED Not WML content:
etc.

It is particularly disappointing that visiting www.nokia.com (or nokia.com) on
most Nokia Mobile phones gives the message "file format unknown".

For comparison, try more "mobile aware sites" such as
www.bango.net   www.winwap.org  www.esato.com www.mopilot.com

These sites provide service to both mobile and fixed users - simply and easily

(3) If .MOBI is issued, it immediately opens the floodgates for more "similar" applications
where the way the browser is connected is somehow encoded in the address of content.
This will be a bad thing.

.FIXED for devices that are not mobile
.WIFI for devices constrained to hot-spots
.CRYPT for devices that only talk over encrypted links
.VISUAL for devices that have screens
.SOUND for devices without screens
etc etc.

The application states:
"A mobile TLD on the Internet creates the opportunity to streamline the deployment of new
Internet sites optimized for mobile usage. This initiative is driven with the aim of simplifying
the Internet experience for mobile subscribers and increasing the ease-of-use and speed
of delivery of mobile services."

On the contrary:
A mobile TLD on the Internet will delay the deployment of new Internet sites optimized for mobile usage.
The .MOBI  initiative will complicate and confuse the Internet experience for mobile subscribers.
It will complicate and slow down the delivery of mobile services.

On behalf of Bango, thousands of our Content Provider partners, and the billions of
future users of mobile devices, we request that ICANN swiftly rejects this proposal.

If any of the sponsors need help in developing their web sites to enable them to better
support mobile devices, as Vodafone has already done, we are certainly more than
willing to help provide them with the appropriate information.







Ray Anderson    CEO     Bango.net Limited   5 Westbrook Centre, Cambridge CB4 1YG, UK  
Tel +44 7768 454545  Fax +44 20 7692 5558  ray@xxxxxxxxx



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