Tucows Announces $40 Million Stock Buyback Program
TORONTO, February 9, 2021 – Tucows Inc. (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC) announced today that its Board of Directors has approved a stock buyback program to repurchase, from time to time, up to $40 million of its common stock in the open market.
Tucows retires seminal Tucows Downloads site
JANUARY 25, 2021, TORONTO — Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC) today announced it has retired the software downloads site that started it all. TUCOWS, which then stood for The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software, started on a library computer in Flint, MI in 1993. 28 years later, it served up its last software download.
What started as a place for people in the know to download software became the place to download software on the burgeoning Internet. The TUCOWS software library (rebadged Tucows Downloads in the 2000s) was “mirrored” by Internet Service Providers worldwide. Its importance in the early distribution of Internet software and in the history of the Internet itself cannot be overstated.
Much of the software that made up the Tucows Downloads library has been transferred to the Internet Archive, for posterity (https://archive.org/details/tucows). The Internet Archive is a cause whose good work Tucows actively supports.
The TUCOWS homepage, circa 1998 via the Internet Archive
As Tucows has evolved as a business and as software downloading itself has changed, the software library that started it all has become much less relevant.
“For the past several years, history, well sentimentality, has been the only reason to keep Tucows Downloads around,” said Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows. “Tucows Downloads has had an incredible run. Retiring it is the right move but that doesn’t alter the fact that it will always hold a special place in hearts and our story.
“We’re thankful to the thousands of software developers who used Tucows Downloads to get their software in front of millions of people, driving billions of downloads over more than 25 years.”
Tucows today
From humble beginnings, today Tucows is the second-largest domain name registrar and the largest wholesaler of domain names in the world with tens of millions of domains under management. The SaaS OpenSRS domain wholesale platform serves tens of thousands of customers including Shopify and other global website builder platforms.
Hover offers domain names and email at retail to help people brand their life online.
Ting Internet is building fiber-optic networks all over the U.S. At the same time, Tucows is building the Mobile Services Enabler (MSE) SaaS platform that is powering DISH’s entry into the U.S. mobile market.
Tucows continues to grow and is hiring remote positions across the board. To see available career opportunities, please visit tucows.com/careers
To read the full letter from CEO Elliot Noss, please visit tucows.com/retired.
About Tucows
Tucows is a provider of network access, mobile technology services, domain names and other Internet services. Ting Internet delivers fixed fiber Internet access with outstanding customer support. Tucows’ mobile services enabler (MSE) platform provides network access, provisioning and billing services for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). OpenSRS, Enom and Ascio combined manage approximately 25 million domain names and millions of value-added services through a global reseller network of over 36,000 web hosts and ISPs. Hover makes it easy for individuals and small businesses to manage their domain names and email addresses. More information can be found on Tucows’ corporate website.
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Welcoming Jill Szuchmacher, seasoned fiber-to-the-home exec, to Ting Internet
I am extremely excited to welcome Jill Szuchmacher to the Tucows executive team. I have known Jill for many years and have always found her to be a fellow traveler on the journey towards the future of Internet networks. We share a vision of not just the business of fiber networks, but the role they play in society more broadly.
Jill was most recently Vice President of Operations at Google Fiber. There she led strategy, planning, training and analytics for build and field operations. As CSO and EVP Networks for Ting Internet, she will be responsible for our construction builds, our pipeline of new Ting towns and for helping me plot the course for the coax to fiber transition that will change the broadband landscape over the next decade.
Read moreTucows welcomes Corinne Schmid VP Marketing, Domains
MAY 26, 2020, TORONTO — Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC) is pleased to welcome Corinne Schmid to lead the way as VP of Marketing on its foundational domains businesses.
Schmid will take the reins on marketing and demand generation efforts for all businesses under the Tucows wholesale domains umbrella including OpenSRS, Enom and Ascio. Combined, these businesses represent some 24 million domain names registered to individuals and businesses all around the world.
Schmid will lead a world-class brand marketing team in finding new ways to create demand and new opportunities to build value for Tucows’ network of 36,000 reseller partners. These resellers comprise website builder brands, web hosts, ISPs, design agencies and more.
Read moreTing welcomes Monica Brown, former T-Mobile, AT&T, Sirius XM Pandora exec, to lead Ting Mobile product
APRIL 15, 2020, TORONTO — Ting Mobile, a top-rated postpaid MVNO mobile phone service and division of Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC), is proud to welcome Monica Brown and her proven product leadership chops to the team as VP of Product. Brown brings more than 25 years of technology and team management experience to Ting. As VP of Product for Ting Mobile, she will take the reins to drive the Ting Mobile business forward, leading a team of world-class Product Managers to balance user needs and business impact.
Brown joins Ting after executing in high-profile roles, most recently as Vice President, Project Management & Product Development at Sirius XM Pandora. There, she set the strategy for integration and alignment of technology systems, planning, leading and managing development programs.
Read moreTing Internet welcomes Neil Shah, former Venmo and Verizon exec, to lead Ting Internet and TV product
APRIL 14, 2020, TORONTO — Ting Internet, a division of Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC) and provider of fiber Internet, is excited to open a new chapter today as Neil Shah joins the company as VP of Product. In this role, Shah will own the Ting Internet and TV product vision and roadmap, leading a world-class team charged with balancing customer needs and business impact.
Shah brings more than 15 years of experience running multi-billion dollar product and design P&L and leading the way on TV product. He will head a team dedicated to providing access to the open Internet, better Internet infrastructure to keep communities connected, and innovative TV products that honor the new cord-cutting reality.
Read moreTucows COVID-19 statement
Tucows is a global business. Our first consideration during the COVID-19 outbreak is for the health and safety of our employees, our customers and their families, all around the world.
On Sunday March 8, Tucows’ leadership announced that all employees who could conceivably work from home should do so. On Monday, March 9 it looked like an overabundance of caution but on the morning of Thursday, March 12, it seemed prescient.
We recognize how important it is that we all do our part to contain this outbreak. Tucows takes that responsibility very seriously, as individuals and as a collective.
Tucows has long encouraged a culture of remote work. We look at work as something people contribute as opposed to a place people go every day. So, while the majority of our workforce is dispersed, we remain productive.
We’re buoyed by the positive spirit the “herd” has brought to this exercise. We’re humbled by our strong culture and community, built by the many individuals and offices around the world that make up our ranks.
We are fortunate that domain registration and mobile phone service can be effectively delivered from our laptops and servers, and are both absolutely central to how people are connecting and transacting today. While fiber-to-the-home requires a physical component, it is also experiencing an upsurge in demand. The state of our business is thankfully very strong.
Domain names
Businesses the world over are moving quickly to get online. Displaced workers are looking to entrepreneurship as the next stage in their career paths. We saw this trend begin to emerge in late March and it is still going strong. With tens of thousands of resellers and millions of end user customers, our Domains business has proven its staying power through several economic cycles, but we are seeing something singular in this current, unprecedented environment. It feels like years of change being crammed into weeks or months. This is more interesting for what it says about the economy than it is material to our business, as new registrations make up only 20% of total transactions historically.
Ting Mobile
Mobile phone service is a necessity. As people stay home as much as possible and as such use much less mobile data given that they’re often around Wi-Fi at home, the Ting Mobile pay for what you use model makes even more sense as mobile data use drops across the board.
Like all Tucows businesses, Ting Mobile operates online and without physical storefronts. It is similarly well-positioned to weather the storm.
Ting Internet
Early in March, as the contagion risks began to quickly escalate, we proactively suspended new installations, unlike much of our competition. While taking a step back and looking at the installation process in detail, we created a temporary review protocol for urgent installations and repairs, focused on health care facilities and health care workers.
We worked on innovating a smart installation solution that would return us to an acceptable cadence for the duration of the threat from COVID-19, while minimizing contact risk between customers and our teams. We began piloting that process on April 20, and we now have an installation process that enables us to return to home and business installations at a time of unprecedented need for the Ting fiber service.
At the same time, we amplified our local relief efforts, creating free, public, fiber-fed Wi-Fi hotspots in Ting Internet towns, and upgrading all entry-tier customers to symmetrical gigabit for 60 days starting April 1 at no charge.
Ting Internet doesn’t have bandwidth caps or other such limitations. Likewise, Ting Internet’s fiber networks are built with plenty of capacity to accommodate future need. The additional traffic from customers working from home, not to mention the fact that we upgraded every lower-tier user to gigabit service without charge, hasn’t had and won’t have any negative impact.
Ting Internet signed the Keep Americans Connected pledge and has also issued its own COVID-19 statement with more detail.
Tucows and Ting Mobile ask the CRTC to sow the seeds for mobile competition in Canada
Are you:
– Canadian?
– A cell phone user?
– Aware of the fact that Canadians pay among the highest price for cell phone service in the world?
and if not…
– Annoyed by the fact that Canadians pay very nearly the highest price for cell phone service in the world now that you know it?
The CRTC is about to hold a hearing on the Future of Mobile Wireless Service in Canada. They have a survey and are asking for public input and insight. You should fill out their survey. You should also share it with your friends
Read moreTucows a GTA Top 2020 Employer
We are thrilled to announce that Tucows has been selected among the winners of Mediacorp Canada Inc.’s GTA Top Employers for 2020. We are proud to be amongst some incredible companies in the GTA. The Greater Toronto’s Top Employers project is an annual editorial competition. Each year, they determine the top companies and organizations to work for in the Greater Toronto Area. It’s an honour to be included in their awards and we’re excited to be named a GTA Top Employer for 2020!
Read moreTing bringing crazy fast fiber Internet to Solana Beach, CA
Expanding its presence in California, Ting will work with Netly to offer true gigabit Internet in Solana Beach.
SOLANA BEACH, CA, November 5, 2019 — Ting, a division of Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX, TSX: TC) is pleased to announce the next town to get crazy fast fiber Internet. Solana Beach joins Fullerton (announced April 2019) to become the second Ting Town in California and tenth Ting Town in the U.S.
Ting Internet’s mission is to bring better Internet access and exceptional customer experience to cities and towns across the US. Working with public and private infrastructure owners is one of the approaches Ting Internet takes to realize this mission. To that end, Netly (netlyfiber.com) is building the city-wide fiber-optic network in Solana Beach past 7,000 addresses, allowing Ting Internet to focus on lighting the network and offering the very best in customer service.
Residents and businesses can pre-order Ting Internet now at ting.com/solanabeach. Netly anticipates Ting Internet will be able to light the first customers later in 2020.
Ting Internet will offer service on the infrastructure of the future: a gigabit fiber network bringing true fiber to the premises (FttP) of every home and business it serves. In other words, every serviced home or business has its own fiber connection directly to the Internet, enabling lightning-fast, low latency, highly reliable Internet access.
“We’re delighted to bring our brand of crazy fast, super reliable Internet to Solana Beach. We’re also looking forward to working with Netly. We continue to see more diversity in the types of partnerships that can help cities and towns get modern Internet infrastructure. More and more entrepreneurs and capital are being attracted to this generational infrastructure opportunity,” said Elliot Noss, CEO of Ting Internet parent company Tucows.
Ting Internet launched in 2015 in Charlottesville, VA and has since brought fiber access to towns and cities in North Carolina, California, Idaho, Maryland and Colorado.
Pre-orders are open for Solana Beach
Solana Beach residents can pre-order Ting crazy fast fiber Internet now at ting.com/solanabeach. Pre-ordering demonstrates local demand and secures the best possible break on start-up costs on Ting gigabit service, including the full cost of installation. A one-time $9 pre-order is returned as a credit on a customer’s first Ting bill.
Network construction is slated to begin in 2020 and will run in neighborhood phases. These construction phases will be visible on the Solana Beach Ting Town page at ting.com/solanabeach when construction commences. This page will be updated regularly as milestones are reached.
Ting Internet offers symmetrical gigabit fiber Internet for residential, small business, and enterprise customers. Home gigabit Internet costs $89 a month. Business gigabit Internet costs $139 a month. Enterprise Internet service levels, installations and pricing vary and can be discussed with our local Enterprise team.
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CEO Elliot Noss, VP Networks Adam Eisner, Director, Market Development and Government Affairs Monica Webb, and other members of the Ting team are always available to speak with local and national media. Well, they may not always be available but they are often happy to chat.
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About Ting Internet
Ting Internet provides crazy fast fiber Internet in select US towns and cities. Ting is committed to net neutrality and the open Internet. More than that, Ting is committed to being a part of improving the communities it serves by supporting and championing local good works. Ting sponsors local programs, events, foundations, festivals, charities, and public services everywhere we go, investing in the future of the towns we serve.
About Tucows
Tucows is a provider of network access, domain names and other Internet services. Ting (ting.com) delivers mobile phone service and fixed Internet access with outstanding customer support. OpenSRS (opensrs.com) and Enom (enom.com) and Ascio (ascio.com) manage over 25 million domain names and millions of value-added services through a global reseller network of over 37,000 web hosts and ISPs. Hover (hover.com) makes it easy for individuals and small businesses to manage their domain names and email addresses. More information can be found on Tucows‘ corporate website (tucows.com).
Tucows, Ting, OpenSRS, Enom and Hover are registered trademarks of Tucows Inc. or its subsidiaries.
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Tucows investor contact Lawrence Chamberlain 416-519-4196 |
Ting press contact Ray Weiss 410-303-5019 |
