.mobi Goes on Sale Today

The specialized TLD (top level domain) for mobile phone related websites, .mobi, will finally go on general sale today at around 8:30pm IST (3:00pm GMT). The .mobi domain has been available for registration by companies to prevent cybersquatting since June 12, which is termed as the ‘sunrise period’. The .mobi domain is backed by a consortium comprising of Nokia, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, the GSM Association, etc.

The TLD is specifically meant to be used by sites that offer services for mobile phones, like the WAP or mobile versions of existing websites in use at the moment. Instead of having a wap.someservice.com or a mobile.someservice.com, sites can now be called someservice.mobi, which makes for easy differentiation from regular non-mobile compatible websites.

The domains will cost around Rs 1,800 per year, which is more than double that of the cheapest .com domains, which go for around Rs 350-400. The extra money is going to be used to ensure that all sites registered under the .mobi domain comply with W3C mobile standards for all mobile users to access them easily. Strict compliance is expected and sites not adhering to the standards will be suspended.

This might be a problem. First of all, the .mobi domains are expensive, and then you need 100% W3C standards compliance or users are going to see a 403. It’s going to take a long time for users to associate .mobi with a website URL, like they do with .com and .net presently. And then, all the new mobile devices can already directly access the regular internet and adapt it for mobile browsing, which is really working out fine.

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Is there really enough incentive for everyone to switch to a .mobi domain just yet?

If you think so, head over to mobidomain.mobi and get yours.