DotMobi, a domain dedicated to delivering the internet to the mobile phone may rid GPRS enabled phones of slow downloads.
NEW DELHI: With excruciatingly slow downloads of html sites on GPRS enabled cellphones and not-so-successful story of WAP sites, dotMobi, a domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to the mobile phone may change all that.
".mobi is a trustmark that says: "This site works on my mobile phone." It is the same internet as the PC-based one, except designed to display quickly and correctly on mobile phones," says Vance P Hedderel of dotMobi.
According to a research by .mobi, people using the Internet on mobile phones are not looking for the same thing they look for on their PCs. "People are not using their mobiles to find a replicated version of PC-based site, instead, they're looking for actionable, context-based information, ideal for mobile phones," says Hedderel.
An advantage that .mobi has is that it is promoted by a consortium of companies including the GSM association, Google, Nokia, Microsoft and others. More than 175,000 .mobi domains have been purchased since the initial "sunrise" launch in May this year.
"It has done well in India with many corporates registering their domains, but it was mainly because of the fear that others may encroach on their domains," says Rajiv Gupta, Manager, Sign Domains, a registrar of .mobi domains here.
According to Gupta, the initial registering cost which was around $100, was one of the reasons for many companies in India not registering their domains.
It has dropped to around $20. The majority of the domain names were purchased after the registration period in late September, according to dotMobi, an indication that many more companies are now interested in having their domain names registered.
".mobi builds on the successful aspects of WAP, and utilizes the open standards and best practices pioneered by the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative. With only three mandatory rules that need to be followed-- program in XHTML, maintain domains at second level (no "www") and don't use frames / pop-ups /auto-refresh" says Hedderel.
"Big corporates are yet to make up their minds about the new domain. WAP was not very exciting and not many things could be done on it, .Mobi could change that," says Sanjay Kathuria of Net4India, a domain registrar.
Many are following the policy of wait and watch, having registered their domain names and if all goes well, they will jump on to the bandwagon, says Kathuria.
.mobi has also come up with a Switch On guide for designers to create sites that will run on .mobi domain. With more and more Indians buying high-end phones and the possible rolling out of 3G services in the country next year, internet on mobile would be easily accessible for a fee, but only time will tell, whether this domain will bring about a revolution in the mobile internet space.
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