How Telnic Will Revolutionize Dialing

The startup's technology will let users store complete contact info on a new .tel domain—and make it available to whomever they choose

By Jennifer L. Schenker

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Say you want to reach an old friend who's always on the move. Calling her at home using the number listed in the phone book (what a quaint notion!) probably won't work. But how else can you find the various other ways to reach her—via mobile, or at work, or perhaps e-mail, instant messaging, Skype (EBAY), Facebook, or Twitter addresses?

Enter Telnic, which is aiming to become the Google (GOOG) of online address books in competition with traditional yellow and white pages. The London-based startup has developed technology that lets anyone store the full range of their contact details online and then give chosen people access to it. "It is a bit like an interactive business card on the Web that you can change and give to anyone so they can reach you," says Justin Hayward, Telnic's communications director. The service is slated to go live in December.

At first blush, that might not sound like much of a breakthrough. But Telnic's approach is revolutionary because it's exploiting a significant new capability in the Internet that has been authorized by governing body ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers), a private nonprofit group that oversees technical aspects of the Internet's address system. ICANN has sanctioned a new top-level domain called .tel—similar to .com or .net—that is set aside purely to integrate contact information directly into the heart of the Net.

Exclusive Domain

Telnic, which has so far raised about $35 million in financing, first applied to ICANN to commercialize the .tel domain in 2000. Permission finally came six years later, when ICANN awarded Telnic exclusive use of .tel. In the intervening time, the startup has spent about $15 million on the years of engineering needed to perfect the technology, Hayward says.

Along the way, Telnic has also attracted prestigious backers including Paris-based venture capital firm Banexi Ventures Partners; Juan Villalonga, a former chief executive of Spanish telecom operator Telefónica (TEF); and the Berggruen Group, led by billionaire Nicolas Berggruen, who made much of his fortune in private equity and hedge funds.

The technology developed by Telnic uses the Internet addressing system in an entirely new way. Until now top-level domains such as .co.uk or .edu have been mapped to Internet Protocol addresses for Web sites or other servers. The .tel scheme is more like a virtual directory—not associated with a specific site—containing all the contact information that individuals, companies, or other organizations wish to publish.

Since .tel information isn't tied to the Web, individuals can post their contact information without having to put up and maintain their own Web sites—or, for that matter, sign up for social networking services such as LinkedIn. (Though they may want to do so for other reasons, such as professional networking.) The information can be retrieved from all manner of devices, including mobile phones or Internet-connected gizmos.