Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the ITU to Paul Twomey: "I refer in particular to the application for “.tel” sponsored by Pulver.com, but my comments below are also applicable to any application which could encompass usage of the E.164 numbering plan...[T]he E.164 international public telecommunication numbering plan is a politically significant numbering resource with direct implications of national sovereignty. It is also subject to a multitude of national approaches, regulatory provisions, and, in some cases, multilateral treaty provisions. Thus, any application for a new Internet top level domain name that envisage interfacing with the global telephony addressing system merits careful consideration."

And make no mistake, he means "careful consideration" as in "denial without review because the issue is too big to even start to consider until we have at least four more years of positioning, hand-wringing, and debate...."