cannot change tel: URI protocol association in Windows 8

For reasons that I fail to comprehend, Google seems to have decided that when a person installs Chrome on Windows 8 that it should be associated with TEL: protocol URIs.  Chrome [without adding extensions] cannot "do" anything with TEL: URIs so this seems pointless.  This is highly annoying since it destroys the very nice 'click to dial' functionality for Communicator.

If one goes into the 'Default Programs' applet in control panel you can see the association, but there is no way that I can find to remove it.  If you want to change/update the association the only choices you are presented with are 'Keep using Google Chrome', or 'Look for an App in the Store'... so that's a dead end too.

Cruising the registry for the register "Tel" class [HKLocalMachine or HKCurrentUser]\classes\tel shows the formerly effective association with Communicator still in place, so a registry edit doesn't seem to be the path to take.

This MSDN article explains in detail the new model for handling protocol and file associations in Windows 8 using an WMAppManifest.xml, but I cannot locate a file by that name anywhere on my system drive.

If anyone has any ideas about how at the least I might be able to destroy the TEL: URI association with Chrome that would be very helpful.

Repairing or einstalling Communicator does not solve the issue btw.

Thanks in advance.