ICANN Approves .mobi Domain Suffix

Pretty soon websites designed for mobile devices will have their very own top-level domain with a fitting name; .mobi. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today approved the new “.mobi” domain suffix.

The mTLD Top Level Domain company which is made up of the likes of Microsoft, Nokia, GSM Association, and Vodafone to name a few, have signed a contract with ICANN that gives them the authority to provide the registry service for .mobi for the next ten years. The company said that they will begin to issue .mobi domains next year.

mTLD also stated that they will require companies that use the domain names to follow a style guideline, this includes requirements such as the ability to view sites on low bandwidth connections, common on cellular networks. mTLD won’t actually police the guidelines, but they state it will be in the best interest to follow them. Rules about flagging adult content are also in the guide.