Several companies from the mobile industry, many of which are in direct competition with each other, plan to apply for a mobile Top Level Domain ("mobile TLD") from the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) during the current application round, which closes March 15.

A Top Level Domain (TLD) is used for Internet addressing, such as, ".com," ".gov," ".org," and so on. The mobile TLD would indicate that the address is a site that is optimized for mobile usage according to the parameters set forth by the domain itself. This effort is driven by the aim of simplifying the Internet experience for mobile subscribers and increasing the ease of use and speed of delivery of mobile Internet services.

So a mobile TLD on the Internet creates the opportunity to streamline the deployment of new Internet sites so that they can be optimized for mobile usage. In addition, a mobile TLD would be designed to enable efficient application and network services and reliability for mobile customers and service providers.

If the application is successful and the mobile TLD is granted by ICANN, the companies (HP, Microsoft Corp., Nokia, Orange, Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd., 3GSM Association, Sun Microsystems and Vodafone) have agreed to form a new joint venture to manage the mobile TLD. They claim a mobile TLD would be a key step in bridging the world of mobility and the Internet.

The companies said they intend to form a registry company to manage the distribution of the new mobile TLD names. The registry company plans to seek participation of additional members to ensure broad customer and industry input.