Mobile industry embroiled in domain debate: top companies move forward on Internet initiative

America's Network, April 15, 2004 by Nancy Gohring

The recently announced initiative to create a mobile Internet domain may be an indication that technologies aimed at translating Web sites on the fly for mobile devices have largely failed, some experts say. They see the request for a mobile domain as a call for the creation of mobile-specific content.

A group of companies including Microsoft, Nokia, T-Mobile, Hewlett-Packard, Sun and others are part of the mobile top level domain initiative, which has applied to ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, for a new mobile Internet domain name.

The initial goal of creating a mobile domain name, say the initiative sponsors, is to make it easier for consumers to recognize which Web sites they can access on their handheld devices with reasonable assurance that the sites will fit the form factor and operate properly on their handsets. "Right now there is no good indicator for content designed for mobile devices," says David Rivas, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems' consumer and mobile systems group. "This provides an indicator for users."

If their bid is successful, the participants will form a company to support the registry. The companies have proposed what word may follow the dot, but ultimately ICANN will decide exactly what the domain will be called.

CAPITULATION OR INNOVATION?

Some onlookers say that the move may be a capitulation by the industry that mechanisms devised so far to deliver Internet based content to mobile devices haven't worked. Historically, content providers have hoped to offer a seamless experience to customers, whether they access a Web site from a computer or a small handheld device. A variety of translation tools are available to content providers that enable them to create content once that can be displayed on any kind of user device. "The problem is, they don't seem to translate that well," says Ken Hyers, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "This is an implicit recognition of that fact."

Some operators seem to hope that a domain may spur the creation of mobile-specific content which could offer a better end user experience and thus spur more customers to access wireless content. While Sprint PCS wouldn't speak on the record for this story, Charles Fleckenstein, group manager of Sprint's network services media relations, says this in an e-mail exchange: "A specific domain would encourage content providers to build wireless-specific content, thus making the wireless environment fuller, richer and more useful for our customers."

While others agree that mobile-specific content is necessary, they don't necessarily agree that the domain will encourage that. "Content needs to be customized for mobile devices but I don't see how a domain will solve the problem," says James Ryan, editorial director for AvantGo, a company that delivers mobile Web sites to handheld devices and is not involved in the mobile Internet domain initiative. "Personally, I don't see any need to have a separate domain name."

Still, the backers of the initiatives have high hopes for what a mobile domain might enable in the future, beyond just serving as an indicator of mobile-friendly Web sites.

For example, ultimately every handheld device may have its own IP address which could correspond to a user's personal Internet address located at the mobile domain. Assigning an IP address to devices may prove useful to customers and operators because it enables the device to be remotely accessed.

In addition, mobile operators can remotely access users' phones to find out what types of errors the phones may be generating and what buttons customers tend to push when a phone has a problem. "If I can't address the phone, I can never get that information," says Mike Wehrs, director of standards and technology at Microsoft.

UNIQUE CHALLENGES

But cell phone and handheld device users present unique challenges to the way the current Internet addressing scheme works precisely because they are mobile. Under the Internet DNS system, when a device with an IP address moves, it gets assigned a new IP address. That process could take two days, far too long for mobile phone users who travel.

If a mobile domain is created, the company that manages the registry can require that new IP addresses be assigned in real time to mobile devices. "In order to get the propagation times we're talking about we need to make changes in how the DNS system replicates addresses within the mobile world," says Wehrs. "We'll be able to set IP propagation times to real time rather than two days."

But even if the group is successful in registering a new domain, the next step, encouraging content providers to use it, may prove difficult to execute. "Have you ever seen anyone with a dot-biz Web site?" asks Barney Dewey, a consultant with the Andrew Seybold Group. He notes that most of the domains that have been added since the original dot-com, dot-org and dot-net domains haven't become widely used. "Every one has failed," he notes.

Initiative supporters recognize that securing the domain is only the first step, but they remain optimistic.