Yes, .tel is the new TLD approved by ICAAN and ******* was the first registrar to sign an agreement with Telnic to sell the .tel. You will get more details on .tel TLS from wikipedia:
.tel domain name is now under Sunrise registration period. we will need to pay a USD350 one-time verification fee for domain registration. this fee is non-refundable in case your trademark verification for .tel domain application fail.
any one have any idea on how is the statistic of successful .tel domain registration?