The door has officially been opened for a whole new generation of mobile-phone related websites - all bearing the .mobi domain.

July 11 was the day when official approval came from the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for the creation of the new suffix.

However, it'll be a while until the first .mobi sites will be viewable. The domains are unlikely to go on sale before 2006, and each site will have to follow a series of guidelines to optimise the webpage for a mobile handset.

Given the wide range of speeds available in handsets, it's likely that the content may be pretty basic compared to modern webpages - and indeed there is sceptism that such a concept would be successful after the introduction - and failure - of WAP to conquer the mainstream.

However, there are some heavyweight backers -  Nokia, Microsoft, T-Mobile and Vodafone and a whole host of other companies have already added their support - and it's likely that the list of companies will grow.