International Telecommunication Union (ITU) came up with an official claim to ICANN in which it warned that registration of numeric domains in domain zone .tel can disorient users and be a conflict trigger. Thus ITU again, although with some delay, confirmed that its position on numeric domains hasn’t changed.
The main reason of ITU’s anxiety is the fact that registration of eight and more symbolic domains consisting of just numbers is in conflict with telephone numbers E.164 international standard. In International Telecommunication Union they are convinced that the appearance of web-addresses which look exactly like telephone numbers can disorient many users.
Exactly these concerns were expressed by ITU in 2000 right from the moment when the idea of creating domain zone .tel was offered for the first time. Moreover, Telnic registry addressed to ICANN asking for a possibility to cancel this restriction. During two years ITU had more than enough time to express its concerns. However International Telecommunication Union decided to do it October, 14, this year, just a day before Telnic with ICANN’s approval is planning to begin numeric domains registration.
