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They say they will set up and run their own registry to manage the .mob domain that they hope the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will grant them.

Microsoft, Nokia, Vodafone, 3, HP, Orange and Sun are among the luminaries to sign the memorandum of understanding supporting the .mob initiative, which they say will make it easier to create sites for use by mobile phones.

'The creation of a mobile Top Level Domain would allow consumers to access the Internet in very different mobility scenarios, whether the access is provided by mobile operator, Internet service provider or various gateway devices at home or enterprise,' said Pertti Korhonen, senior VP and CTO at Nokia.

While .com, .net, .org and so on are well established, there already exists a number of more specialised top level domains such as .museum, .pro and .name. So .mob would not such an unusual addition to the TLD stable.