.tel domains are publicly available for registration since March 24th 2009. With more than 275,000 .tel domain name registrations in its first year already, Telnic became the 7th largest registry under ICANN supervision, leaving competitors like .asia and .name behind. A real success story! In the meantime, the .tel community has grown to members in more than 170 countries all over the planet.

By now, with the introduction of the numerous new Top Level Domains (nTLDs), the balance of powers has shifted again. However, .tel is and will remain a successful and a special TLD that offers a lot of surplus value for its customers. Currently (as of March 2025), there are about 40,000 .tel domains registered.

.tel domains are based on a revolutionary technology that allows for the usage of easy memorable names instead of numbers on the telephone, exactly as we know it from the Internet. When surfing the Web, we use domain names like www.mycompany.com to go to a certain Web page although that page is actually identified by a number (its IP address). With .tel, this principle is transferred to the telephone.

With a .tel domain you can not only maintain contact data for landline connections and mobile phones but all kinds of contact information, e.g., also for Fax, E-mail, Chat, Skype, location based information, etc. And because these information can also be processed automatically, a lot of useful applications and services can be built on top of them.

Because .tel has been introduced long before the bulk of nTLDs came into being, a number of ICANN-imposed usage restrictions have applied until 2017. For example, no individual A records were allowed so that it was not possible to operate an independent website under a .tel domain.

Instead, you would select one of the available page layouts via the TelHosting system and the associated apps with which you manage your contact data and contents, and create your individual appearance with your own images and a coloring of your choice.

Especially in economically difficult times .tel domains present a way for a broad target group to develop new markets at very low investments and to strengthen the communication with existing customers while reducing costs at the same time (e.g., by using Voice-over-IP).

In March 2017, ICANN has lifted all important restrictions so that it is now possible to operate individual Websites and all types of services with a .tel domain. It still remains possible, however, to use the included TelHosting service to manage and host the domain data, although with a somewhat modified function range.

Together with the updated policy, new features have been added, such as more advanced user options for page layout and design, voucher and offers, PayPal integration, PDF publishing, and an image gallery. Other features have been abandoned, like support for subdomains, private data (previously known as “TelFriends”) and the .tel domain search function (“TelPages”).

You can see an example page with the new look and including some of the above features at telpage.tel.

.tel is a unique, versatile and cost-effective top level domain that makes it possible for absolutely everybody to present themselves on the Internet.