The landrush for the new .Tel  extensions open at 10am EST this morning on a first come, first served basis.

.Tel registrations will be available though many registrars including moniker.com

I met Justin Edelman, last week at DomainFest, a representative for the .tel registry, whose .tel domain is Justin.Tel is up and operating if you want to see what this type of page looks like.

Justin is a very nice guy who will tell you that the .tel extension is like no other and according to the New York Times, has he “potential to become a phone book for the Internet”.

Landrush continues through March 23, 2009, after which Open Registrations will begin.

A .tel domain provides organizations of all sizes a named listing with unlimited contact information in a global directory, accessible from any device connected to the Internet.

. Customers can then search for and find up-to-date contact information quickly, at little or no cost to them, connecting with .tel owners dynamically.

Additionally, the .tel domain is search engine optimized through its ability to store indexed keywords, providing additional content for branded discoverability on the web.

All of this is provided without any further investment over and above the cost of purchasing the domain name. It requires no technical skill to set up and can be managed by a simple dashboard.

Justin tells me that pre-orders for the landrush, which have been open at domainmonster.com a newer registrar, for a while, are running 4x ahead of their pre-orders for .asia landrush names.

As an application, .tel, seems like it may have some use.

With a short, easy first domain, like justin.tel, it certainly is easy to remember and you can use it to find all the guys contact info.

However, from the domaining point of view, its going to be an expensive game to play.

First during the landrush you must do a three year registration.

Second the annual registration during the landrush is $116 per year.

So each landrush .tel domain is going to set you back $348, and the fees are non-refundable under all circumstances.

Will there be an aftermarket?

If so I would think it would be limited to very popular first names.

Michael.tel, for example would be worth the $348 and I could see it selling for thousands or higher on the resale market.

However a generic word like soda.tel, would seem to have little value, (i’m my opinion).

The usually laws of trademark violations are in play for this extension so keep that in mind if your going for walmart.tel, and don’t do it.

If any of you are involved in the landrush, please share you stories of registrations or attempted registrations, including how the particular registrar you used performed and how the central registry performed.

Best of luck if your going for one or more.