A historic anniversary and a new beginning?

Today it is the 50th anniversary of the first directly dialled trunk call. Ask anybody under the age of thirty what a trunk call is and they’ll probably give you a blank look and talk about elephants, but the ability to get hold of half the world’s population by pressing only 13 buttons is still an impressive engineering achievement. The Queen made the first directly dialled call 50 years ago today (and if you believe that you’ll believe anything - there is ZERO chance that such a high profile event wasn’t checked a zillion times by engineers before the big moment. I speak as someone for whom the disaster demo is an ever-present threat...) and you can watch her doing it here.

But this week also marks the launch of a new service that (its designers and owners claim...) could change the way we contact people and business. The .tel internet domain is designed to act as a global phonebook - but a phonebook that sits on the internet for everybody to see.

The .tel idea is that businesses register their names on the .tel domain (for example, callmedia.tel) and that, rather than publishing a web site there, the business stores its contact details within the domain management system itself.

The way the internet usually works is that a “phone book for the internet” (known as DNS) tells your browser how to find a particular website. This if your browser wants to find callmedia.co.uk, it sends a request to a DNS server which returns the underlying internet address of the website. In the case of Callmedia.co.uk, that’s 87.106.210.114 - you can see why the DNS makes it easier to remember. Your browser then goes to that internet address, downloads the pages and displays them on your screen.

The idea of the .tel domain is that the DNS system itself will return not just the internet (or IP) address, but also other relevant contact information such as telephone numbers, email addresses, mobile numbers, SIP addresses etc. For individuals, the sell is that you can keep all your information in one place and when your details change, you only update them once. rufusgrig.tel would then know my new numbers. If the system takes off, then in my Outlook or BlackBerry address book, I may only store the .tel information for a business contact, and then when I want to call their home number the BlackBerry will go to the .tel service, find out what the current number is, and call it for me. So far so good - but what’s this got to do with customer contact?

For a business, the .tel may become a good way of generating opportunities and steering your customers to contact you in the most appropriate way. Because the information is structured, it is easy for web developers and other manufacturers to integrate with .tel to find numbers, web addresses and the like - making global Yellow and White pages that is automatically integrated with mobile phones, laptops and even consumer devices like Wiis and xboxes.

It will be interesting to see if it takes off. And interesting to look back in 50 years time and see how quaintly old fashioned the whole thing seems!

Meanwhile, I wonder if the Queen will be an early adopter again, like she was with the trunk calls. It could be yourmajesty.tel, thequeen.tel, buckinghampalace.tel, lizzie.tel? Which will she go for?