Showing posts with label Siter Domain Dialing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Siter Domain Dialing. Show all posts

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Domain Dialing in Dakar!

I attended the ICANN meeting in Senegal and had a first hand look at the concept of Domain Dialing, a new app and concept that first gained prominence during the ICANN meeting in Singapore. During the ICANN Dakar meeting, which Siter was also sponsoring, the Brazilian tech start-up was assigning domain dialing app to smartphones(iPhones, Blackberry and Android) at no extra cost and the company's Chief Operating Officer Mr. Ricardo Vaz Monteiro was also busy demonstrating the concept to visitors to the booth.



Siter Domain Dialing is a Brazilian innovation that is already shaking up the domain name industry. Simply put, it's the first and only application that makes phone calls without using any phone numbers. All you need is a domain name to dial; it's based on the fact that customers always intuitively remember the domain name of a company but remembering the phone numbers might another issue altogether. Site therefore makes it easier for customers to easily access relevant phone numbers armed only with the company's domain name.

Assigning a single domain name is free but there are various packages for assigning multiple phone numbers to a domain name. The app is also very useful in locating global contacts for companies both big and small. Suppose I need Emirates Airlines' global contact details, all i need to do is enter emirates.com and the app will show me the most relevant phone contact details, based on my location, for Emirates for me to "domain dial". It makes life much easier for users interested in contacting companies especially airlines, hotels, banks, car dealerships, franchises, restaurants with multiple phone contacts and where the location of the person making the phone call is important.

For big business, this can be particularly advantageous.Businesses can assign unlimited phone numbers for various branches and global offices per URL for just $500 per year making themselves easily visible to customers globally. Users can also assign upto 100 phone numbers per url for just $100 per year plus other smaller packages. The advantage is that customers do not have to waste time on websites and search engines digging through pages looking for phone numbers. All they have to do is dial businessname.com and voila! There they have all your local phone details! Based on the premise that business rarely change their domain names, Siter ensures that your customers will always find you, no matter how many times you change your phone numbers.

Opportunity for Registrars to make more money!
Siter COO Ricardo Vaz Monteiro with NIRA COO Ope Odusan
 Siter also offers registrars an opportunity to make lots of additional revenue by introducing an additional frill during the domain registration process that registrants can buy into. All the registrar has to do is integrate the Siter API into the domain registration process and split the revenue 50/50 with Siter for every customer who buys the offer. The app works for both ccTLD and gTLD domains. In Africa, Siter has already signed a deal with the Nigerian Internet Registration Association that will see Domain Dialing being introduced into the Nigerian Domain market and amongst Nigerian businesses. Nigeria has therefore become the first African country to adopt the domain dialing concept. 

 I need to elaborate on the fact that the service is very location based meaning that only the phone numbers closest to the current position of the caller will be listed. So if you are in Kenya and need contact details for Kenya Airways for example, dialing kenya-airways.com will show you KQ phone numbers for HQs, Barclays Plaza, Kisumu, Mombasa, Eldoret, Malindi etc. Very interesting concept indeed and I hope more African businesses will adopt this for the convenience of the clients and also to increase their brand awareness in this increasingly mobile web!


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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Domain Dialing Comes to Nigeria: SITER LLC SIGNS DEAL WITH .NG, REGISTRY FOR NIGERIAN DOMAIN NAMES, TO OFFER “DOMAIN DIALING”

Siter Domain Dialing has signed a contract with Nigeria Internet Registration Association to Offer its innovative domain  dialing service to more than 25,000 websites in Nigeria.The  contract will bring smartphone-based service to more than 25,000 websites.

 
 DAKAR, Senegal (October 26, 2011) --- Siter, LLC announced it has signed a new contract to offer its unique “domain dialing” service to the over 25,000 domain names affiliated with .NG, the official domain name registry for Nigeria.  The announcement was made this week as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meets in Dakar, Senegal to discuss the expansion of the Internet throughout Africa.

Domain dialing is a new concept provided via Siter - a free application for smartphones, whereby users can “dial” a domain instead of searching for or trying to remember a domain’s phone number.  The app also uses geolocation, customizing results to connect users to the company’s locations closest to wherever the user is.

“Smartphone usage is huge in Nigeria, with almost 5 million users nationally” said Ope Odusan, chief operating officer of Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), which controls the .NG top-level domain. “Siter’s domain dialing is a natural fit for our businesses and we’re pleased to incorporate it into our offerings to people interested in .NG domains.”

The partnership, which will provide new and existing .NG users free access to update their company’s listings in Siter’s systems, will be official and go live at the end of 2011.

“Domain dialing provides a new way for businesses using .NG to connect to smartphone users around the world,” said Ricardo Vaz Monteiro, chief operating officer and co-founder of Siter.  “People who understand domain naming are excited to hear about how services like Siter can help them maximize the value of their domain names.”

Siter is based in Brazil, and has successfully included more than 25 million phone numbers into its system.  The free app is available for iPhone, Android, and most Blackberry devices.
For additional information on Siter, including details on how domain name registrants can use domain dialing, visit: http://www.siter.com.  For additional information on the Nigeria Internet Registration Association, visit: http://www.nira.org.ng.


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Thursday, October 20, 2011

DotConnectAfrica: ICANN 42 Dakar: Meet the Yes2dotAfrica Campaign in Senegal!

DotConnectAfrica is delighted to inform its Pan-African constituency, and indeed, its significant community of stakeholders and avid supporters of the forth-coming ICANN Conference for Developing countries to be held in Dakar, Senegal from 23 October to 28 October 2011.

This will be another historic ICANN meeting, following the formal approval of the new generic Top Level Domains Program by the ICANN Board during the “ICANN Oscars” in Singapore in June 2011. It is also the last ICANN meeting before the commencement of the application process for the new gTLDs.  For DCA, it is the last meeting to rest our case for a new Top Level Domain name for Africa after six years of traversing the continent saying “Yes to DotAfrica”.

DCA intends to participate at ICANN meeting in Dakar and lend its voice and support to the proceedings.  DCA’s enormous pride and happiness in the forthcoming ICANN-42 Dakar meeting is two-fold:
First, the ICANN-42 meeting is taking place in an African country, and DCA’s principal interest is applying for the DotAfrica gTLD.   It is therefore an important recognition for Africa as one of the key geographic regions of ICANN.    Thus, the ICANN Dakar meeting promises to focus positive attentions not only on Africa, but also on DCA as the chief proposer of the DotAfrica initiative.

DCA has singularly championed and clarified the DotAfrica gTLD initiative over several years of painstaking hard work, and in the process, obtained key supportive endorsements for it from various stakeholders]
. Second, DotConnectAfrica is also one of the official sponsors of the ICANN-42 meeting in Dakar. Again, DotConnectAfrica (DCA) is proud of its long corporate association with ICANN, and has historically supported, and consistently participated in official ICANN events; having previously sponsored the ICANN meeting in Brussels in 2010 where the recommendations of the generic Names Supporting Organizations (gNSO) on the new gTLDs were adopted by the ICANN Board.

DotConnectAfrica’s involvement in ICANN meetings has therefore been consistent and stead-fast, and again re-confirms DCA’s long-standing and active commitment to the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance model.  We have been attending nearly every ICANN meeting for the last 6 years: contributing to the new gTLDs debate, visibly advancing new gTLD and also Africa’s concerns and positions on issues of Internet Governance at ICANN and to other global publics.  In the process, we widely promoted the Yes2DotAfrica Campaign and networked with the ICANN global community of stakeholders to get their valuable insight into issues of importance to the African Internet Community. DCA’s participatory leadership in these matters is unquestionable.

The ICANN Dakar meeting coming at this time, DotAfrica will be uppermost in everyone’s mind and DCA intends to use this opportunity to again reach out to a larger target audience whilst focusing on building the necessary consensus and the invaluable partnerships that will further reinforce the Yes2dotafrica Campaign so as to make the DotAfrica vision a reality.

DCA will forever remain proud of its vigorous campaign in support of the ICANN programme for the introduction of new gTLDs and its complementary successful campaign and advocacy for DotAfrica for the benefit of Africa.

The DotConnectAfrica Organization therefore joins the Government and people of Senegal in welcoming the global internet community to Dakar the Land of the Teranga and Leopold Sedar Senghor’s ‘Negritude’, and to Africa, the home of DotAfrica.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for Updates during the ICANN meeting.


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