The tiny, financially strapped Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu has cashed in on the alphabetic quirk that assigned it with the ubiquitous ".tv" Internet country code.
Published:
18 April 2000 y., Tuesday
DotTV has agreed to pay Tuvalu $50 million in royalties over the next decade for use of the country code. The Internet start-up intends to sell the rights to Web addresses ending in ".tv," such as www.abc.tv or www.lawandorder.tv. "It's the most recognizable two-letter symbol on the planet," DotTV chief Lou Kerner said. "When you marry 'dot' with 'TV,' you become something very meaningful on the Internet." In a test earlier this week, Kerner said, he sold 200 Internet names ending in ".tv" for about $300,000. The record price for an Internet address is $7.5 million, paid by a Texas company last year for www.business.com. DotTV's minimum quarterly payment of $1 million to Tuvalu--nine atolls located halfway between Hawaii and Australia-- will be the single- largest source of income for the nation of 10, 600. "We were very, very, very poor, but now we are getting some money from the marketing of assets like dot-tv," said Koloa Talake, a member of Tuvalu's parliament who helped negotiate the deal.
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