Submitted by: kirkland on Thursday March 11th, 2004 at 07:01 PM EST

In an effort to spur cell phone Internet usage, a group of nine companies including mobile phone operating system developers Microsoft and Nokia has proposed to establish a new Internet address domain.

The proposal seeks to create a new top-level domain (TLD) like .cell or .mobile that would make it easier for mobile phone users to find sites catering to mobile phone users. For instance, a company's mobile site might read “acme.mobile” rather than “mobile.acme.com.”

The firms said Wednesday they will apply to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN.) The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding to apply to ICANN for the Web access domain, said Kieran Baker, ICANN spokesman.

The next step, said Baker, will be for an independent body of experts to evaluate the application. Such requests normally take several weeks, depending on the number of applications received by ICANN. The deadline for applying in the current session is Tuesday, so the group is under the wire with its application, Baker said.

In addition to Microsoft and Nokia, the others requesting the new domain name are Vodafone Group PLC, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s 3 unit, GSM Association, Hewlett-Packard Co., France Telecomm's Orange operation, Samsung Electronics Co., and Sun Microsystems Inc.

ICANN moved last year to expedite the process for approving “new sponsored generic TLDs,” Baker said. Examples of new sponsored TLDs include .museum, coop, and aero. ICANN does not require that sponsors of TLDs be non-profit, although sponsors of original domain addresses were non-profit organizations.

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