Telecom's mobile division has begun to gear up for the mid-year launch of its CDMA network by registering a swathe of domain names – some of them literally colourful.
Industry observers may care to speculate on the thinking behind alphabluemobile.co.nz, basemobile.co.nz, bitemobile.co.nz, chatmail.co.nz, futureofmobile.co.nz, jamamobile.co.nz, orbmobile.co.nz, pearlmobile.co.nz, sonnetmobile.co.nz, starfishmobile.co.nz and wavemobile.co.nz. Equivalents under .org.nz and .net.nz have also been registered for all.
Telecom spokesman Glen Sowry confirmed that the names have been registered with a view to the pending CDMA rollout.
"The primary growth of CDMA will ultimately be as a wireless data platform," says Sowry. "The main reason for the registration of a whole host of domain names is somewhat speculative – it's all been about registering domain names which may be useful in the future when we take different initiatives to market on the new mobile platform.
"A lot of the applications which you and I are likely to be using on our mobile phones in the next two or three years haven't even been developed yet. This makes a stake in the ground.
"So there's nothing specifically to talk about on the overall strategy other than that the internet clearly is going to figure largely in future mobile developments."
By coincidence or otherwise, a number of other names have been registered recently to both Telecom Internet Services and Telecom New Zealand.
Telecom Internet Services has registered messaging.co.nz, xtraaudio.co.nz, xtragaming.co.nz, xtrahispeed.co.nz, xtralife.co.nz, xtramessageboard.co.nz, xtramusic.co.nz, xtratechnology.co.nz, xtrawoman.co.nz, and xrat.co.nz for the typing-challenged internet user.
At the same time it finally retired nearly two dozen "live" names – from greymouthlive.co.nz to hamiltonlive.co.nz – originally registered as part of a long-abandoned plan to developed a network of regional portals based on the AucklandLive site.
Telecom itself finally got around to registering the name mytelecom.co.nz, along with three business-themed names; b-zone.co.nz, bizzone.co.nz and businesszone.co.nz.
Meanwhile, clearproject.co.nz was recently registered to the Clear Communications Promo Account and Vodafone registered cooltribe.co.nz.