Las Vegas, Nev. – At the Cellular
Telecommunications & Internet Association ( CTIA ) meeting here, mTLD, Ltd..
announced that its years long efforts to establish a top level domain address
designed specifically for the requirements of Internet connected mobile devices
is a success.
At the CTIA show, Neil Edwards, CEO, mTLD Ltd.
said that “.mobi” will be going on line as of May 22 as the first and only
Internet address created for mobile phones.
Backed by many of the world's leading mobile
operators, handset manufacturers and software developers, mTLD has been
designated the official worldwide registry for the dotMobi domain.
Leading mobile industry associations including
the GSM Association (an mTLD founding investor), CTIA – The Wireless
Association, and the Mobile Marketing Association have lined up to support an
early dotMobi launch for their members May 22-29, 2006.
Referred to as the sunrise period, this launch
offers the mobile industry a week-long advance period to register their trade
and service marks.
Edwards said mTLD is working closely with the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), registrars, copyright bodies
and site owners to ensure that trademarks are properly protected during the
sunrise period.
"The dotMobi Internet address, brings the ease
of accessing the Internet
from the PC to mobile phones everywhere, and
clearly indicates Internet sites and applications that are designed for
consumers on the go," said Edwards. "dotMobi is the Internet made mobile.
"More people have access to an Internet-ready
phone than to a PC with Internet access. By 2008, researchers expect 1.3 billion
people to be connected to the Internet through mobile devices.”
However, accessing the Internet on a mobile
phone can be frustrating. Downloading content to mobile devices can be
expensive, slow, exceed screen size, and difficult to navigate.
"Many existing Internet sites are grounded in
desktop PC-oriented services and were not designed with a mobile phone in mind,
which has led to less than ideal performance for consumers," said Edwards. "The
dotMobi sites are tailor-made for browsing and navigating on the mobile phone,
making a far better experience."
To make creating Web sites for mobile Internet
functional and reliable, mTLD has developed rules and best practices, all based
on open standards, for content developers and service providers. This ensures
that their Web sites can be viewed and navigated by any mobile phone.
The consultative dotMobi Switch On! Web
Browsing Guide may be found at mtld.mobi. A guide for mobile messaging will be
launched later this year. Edwards said these guides are based on best practices
specified by the World Wide Web Consortium's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI).
mTLD has already issued temporary domain names
to Newbay, Nokia, TIM, Vodafone and Weather Channel, among others, to
demonstrate the improved reliability of downloading dotMobi Web content on
mobile devices.
Top Level Domain Ltd (mTLD), gained approval
from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for the '.mobi'
Sponsored Top level Domain (TLD) in the second half of 2005.
mTLD is backed by leading mobile operators,
network and device manufacturers, and Internet content providers. Investors in
mTLD include Ericsson, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom
Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM and
Vodafone. mTLD is also a sponsor of W3C's Mobile Web Initiative.
For more information, go to
http://mtld.mobi.
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