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13 July 2005 A consortium of technology companies is aiming to regenerate interest in mobile access to the Internet by introducing a special web address for sites customised for wireless devices.

Icann, the body responsible for overseeing Internet domain names reached agreement with mTLD, a consortium of technology companies that includes Vodafone, Microsoft and Nokia, to introduce a new set of addresses. The .mobi address has been added to existing top-level domain names such as .com, .net and .org.

This will encourage the adoption of mobile Internet access by reassuring users that the web sites can be rendered correctly from a mobile device, said mTLD executives. ".mobi will indicate to consumer and enterprise users that the site they are visiting is optimized for the delivery of content and services to mobile devices," said Ameet Shah, chairman of mTLD.

mTLD will make the first .mobi domain names available during the first half of 2006. An initial 90 day sunrise period will allow corporations with trademark validated names to secure a second-level .mobi domain after which generic second level domain names will be available on a first come, first served basis.

Although there are an estimated 1.8 billion mobile phones in use worldwide, adoption of mobile Internet surfing has been slow.

The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) was heralded as a huge advance in Internet access during the early part of the decade. But this initial optimism failed to be matched by consumer interest. The protocol restricted access to all but a few specially coded web pages, and those that could be accessed were more akin to teletext pages than web pages.

While improvements in mobile technology, such as GPRS, have improved WAP access speeds and driven down costs, adoption has still be sluggish.

Meanwhile, the rollout of 3G service has enabled users to access the Internet fully. But again, adoption of 3G has been slow.