March 11, 2004
New Domain Is Proposed
By CHRIS OAKES

International Herald Tribune


PARIS, March 10 - In a sign that the wireless Internet is coming of
age,  Nokia,  Vodafone,  Microsoft and six other technology and
telecommunications companies joined Wednesday to propose the equivalent
of a .mobile Internet address category for mobile Web access.

The nine companies, which also include  Hewlett-Packard, the Orange
unit of France Télécom and Samsung Electronics, announced their
application for a mobile-specific domain in London. The actual name for
the address suffix has yet to be determined, but would indicate a
wireless theme, like .mobile or .phone, the group said.

Cellphones and hand-held organizers are increasingly being made with
the ability to gain access to Internet sites and services, like weather
forecasts or stock prices, and the telecommunications industry is
counting on these services to generate higher revenue. But their tiny
screens have made conventional Web pages impossible to see and use. One
standard adopted to reformat such pages, called Wireless ApplicaTion
Protocol, has helped the miniaturization, but not all sites have been
converted.

The application, submitted to the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers, or Icann, the overseer of the Internet's address
system, calls for a new, for-profit joint venture set up by the
companies to manage the mobile registry. Names purchased from the
company would explicitly point to wireless-focused domains, making the
registry a new type of electronic postal code on the Internet.

  "If you went onto a .mobile site, that site would be specifically
tailored for use by a mobile device," a Vodafone spokesman said,
emphasizing that the .mobile name was only hypothetical. "The whole
site would have been organized for speed of download, ease of use and
simplicity."

The companies could require any name registered under the new address
heading to have a mobile-specific purpose. By contrast, names
registered for use with .com, .net and other generic endings need not
have any specific thematic purpose.

  "You could actually put in place policies that are specific to these
services that the domain is supposed to go after," said Michael Wehrs,
director of mobile devices standards and technology at Microsoft.

  "The idea is to positively influence the services of participating
sites," he added, not to be exclusionary.

  After Icann's current application round closes on March 16,
independent evaluators will examine the proposals. The technology and
telecommunications group expects the application process to take three
to six months, and services based on the new address, if approved,
might arrive by the first half of 2005.

"There's a lot of momentum behind it," said Jessica Figueras of Ovum, a
consultancy in London. "It's certainly a good thing to do. The question
is how much can they encourage mobile-friendly sites.''

BINNEH S MINTEH

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

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