New York, NY – June 19, 2001- Tucows Inc., a leading distributor of e-business services and applications on the Internet, announced today that it has reached an agreement with VeriSign Global Registry Services (GRS) to offer the .cc country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) to its channel of 5,000 resellers worldwide. The unrestricted .cc extension can be used on the Internet in precisely the same way as the .com extension – the most successful domain name extension in the world. As the largest wholesale Registrar, Tucows’ new distribution will make .cc one of the most widely available country code extensions on the market.
“As the Internet continues to expand, unrestricted country codes like .cc are especially valuable for organizations and individuals that are looking for unused real estate on the Internet,” said Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows. “.cc is a viable and popular alternative to the overcrowded .com domain, and will provide our resellers with another important tool to build their businesses.”
VeriSign GRS offers .cc, the country code for Cocos (Keeling) Island, a territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean, through an agreement with eNIC Corporation, a Seattle, Washington-based company that has been charged with the management of the registry by the government of Cocos. To-date, close to 400,000 .cc names have been registered, ranking .cc among the most popular country codes in the world. Tucows will provide the complex technical infrastructure – the tools, systems and people – through its OpenSRS wholesale service, to allow resellers to easily and efficiently offer end-users a local interface on the Internet. Tucows uses a standards-based platform to provide maximum reliability, scalability and efficiency for global Top Level Domain operations. Services will be available for Tucows’ resellers beginning Tuesday, June 19, 2001 and to end-users shortly thereafter. More information is available at www.tucows.com.
In addition to .com, .net and .org, Tucows will offer its resellers the generic TLDs .info and .biz. Also, Tucows has been chosen to operate the registry for the .vc extension, and continues to offer its resellers the country code extensions .ca, .co.uk, and .org.uk.
Tucows Inc. recently announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement with Infonautics, Inc. (NASDAQ: INFO), a provider of personalized information agents and Internet sites. The merger transaction, which is subject to shareholder and certain regulatory approvals, is expected to close during the third quarter of 2001.
About Tucows
Tucows Inc. is a leading distributor of e-business services and applications on the Internet. With a network of more than 5,000 resellers in more than 100 countries around the world, Tucows is the largest network of its kind. The Tucows site offers more than 30,000 software titles in libraries located around the world, providing users with a fast local download. Tucows is an ICANN-accredited registrar and a leading provider of wholesale domain name registrations for country code and generic TLDs, plus Web Certificates. For more information, please visit: http://www.opensrs.org or http://partner.tucows.com or go to https://www.tucows.com and click on Partner Home.
Media contact:
Dan Klores Associates, Inc.
Public Relations
Mark Hazlin / Ed Tagliaferri
Ph: (212) 685-4300
mark_hazlin@dkcnews.com / edmund_tagliaferri@dkcnews.com
This news release contains, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements may include statements regarding, for example, the launch and eventual success of new Top Level Domains, and the closing of the pending Tucows-Infonautics merger. Such statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements included in this document are based on information available to Tucows as of the date of this document, and Tucows assumes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements.