.tel domain name is a top-level domain (TLD) approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD and operated by Telnic.[4] Telnic announced in May 2009 that 200,000 .tel domains had been registered since General Availability on March 24th 2009.

Its (.tel domain TLD) advertised purpose is as a single management and publishing point for "internet communication" services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the Domain Name System.

The Telnic .tel domains were not open to customers to use until March 6, 2009. At present, information in the .tel domain cannot be controlled by the owner except through a website control panel that Telnic has created for Registrars to provide to their customers or through clients for BlackBerry, Outlook and the iPhone. The control panel is open source, and can be changed or completely replaced by Registrars if they so wish, as all the APIs required to manage .tel domain information in the DNS were released by Telnic in October 2008.

When viewed over the Web, all .tel domains point directly to a Telnic proxy webpage that is populated 'on the fly' presenting the respective domain name owner's contact data stored within the DNS system (currently hosted by Telnic but which will be opened to Registrars once accreditation procedures are formalized). .tel domains can also be accessed without opening a browser on many devices through open source applications or through direct DNS lookups.

.tel domain TLD was released to trademark holders only until February 3, 2009, perhaps suggest that the resulting database of contact information can somehow be trusted as the "official" contact information of the "rightful owner" of those trademarks. However, after the short period of legitimate registrations restricted to trademark holders only (the "Sunrise" period), anyone willing to pay a premium price was allowed to buy any domain name (the "Landrush" period) regardless of who owned the trademark. Furthermore, during "General Availability" anyone is now be able to register any name (assuming that it is available for registration) without paying a premium price. The information held under the .tel domain will be no more accurate or trustworthy than any other user defined data held in the DNS system. It will be down to individual .tel domain owners to choose what they wish to store there.