Creation of domain zone MOBI has been approved in Luxembourg at conference of corporation ICANN even in the summer of 2005. Then start of the project has been appointed to first half of 2006. Sponsors of the project of steel Ericsson, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM and Vodafone. They in a consequence also had an opportunity priority registration of domains in the given zone.

The official registrar of domains MOBI became company Mobile Top Level Domain Ltd. (mTLD). This organization based in Dublin (Ireland), for today is the leader in technologies of use of the Internet in mobile devices with attraction of domain MOBI. Being unique among registrars of domain names, mTLD guarantees, that services and sites in domain MOBI will be optimized under use in mobile devices. Consumers can be assured, that, typing the address of a site in domain MOBI, the site will be always accessible from their mobile devices.

Registration of domain names in the new domain of general using MOBI, intended for mobile devices, has begun with May, 22nd, 2006. In domain MOBI the sites focused on viewing from mobile devices are placed. These are sites which format allows to look through them on small screens of mobile phones and other portable devices connected to the Internet through low-speed channel. Among such sites it is possible to mention: Yahoo.mobi, MSN.mobi, Hotjobs.mobi, Cingular.mobi, Sprint.mobi, Verizon.mobi, CBS.mobi, TimeWarner.mobi and Fox.mobi. And also sites of films, cartoon films, and their heroes: Batman.mobi, BugsBunny.mobi, CatWoman.mobi, Flintstones.mobi, Matrix.mobi, Scooby-Doo.mobi and ThunderCats.mobi.

Certainly, the majority of sites in a network are still focused on viewing from desktop computers or laptops and are not intended absolutely not for loading from mobile devices. Usual sites at viewing on portable devices with small screens can cause awful impression. The new domain will allow to allocate sites on the Internet, accessible and convenient to all users of mobile devices.

Mobile Top Level Domain also has developed rules and recommendations for the providers, based on the open standards. These recommendations are called to provide normal work with sites on any portable devices. Some of recommendations are already published on a site mtld.mobi.

Opening of a zone .mobi has caused criticism from consortium W3C which is responsible for development of Web-standards. Representatives of this organization, in particular, general director Tim Berners-Lee, consider, that sites should not be divided by a principle: these for computers, and these is for mobile devices. From the point of view of W3C, automatic definition of type of the device on a server and delivery of the optimized pages would be ideal.

Active development of this domain zone should be reflected in the market of a hosting services positively. Not all providers of hosting service can brag of optimization of the systems for processing inquiries of mobile devices. In the near future it is necessary to expect occurrence of specialized services, and the software products allowing as much as possible to simplify development and accommodation of sites for mobile devices.