This question has been bugging me lately and I'm hoping to get an answer soon: How can registrars offer 10-year renewals on .TV when the Verisign contract with Tuvalu expires years earlier?
It would be great to get an official response from a .TV registrar. I will open a trouble ticket with enom today through my reseller interface and let eveyone know if they reply.
Posted under Category: ChannelME.tv Questions
Ticket #080828-000075
Dear Support:
I have a customer that wants to develop a website and would like to register his .TV domain for 10 years. Before I recommend this to my client, I would like an official response to the following question:
How can enom and other registrars offer 10-year renewals on .TV domains when the Verisign contract with Tuvalu expires years earlier?
This is a very important question that myself and many other .TV enthusiasts would like answered.
Enom ignored my last email ... talk about customer service
hope you get an answer.
__________________ cityforum.com -
Do you have your own cityforum ?
Toronto, Montreal, Hyderabad and Los Angeles are now taken. Send a PM if you wish to join us with your city in this group development project. Free Hosting.
"The .tv Corporation" owns the .tv cctld, which is privately held by Verisign. Tuvalu owns 20% of "The .tv Corporation". Could it be that there is no lease, that at the end of the terms Tuvalu will be paid in full and only have their 20%?
NO JLC The Island nation of TUVALU owns .tv and Verisign in 2001 got the rights to market it for 15 years. They bought the .tv corporation not the actual cctld.
Greg I believe they would be thrilled with as many regs as possible, its not like the extension would halt if Tuvalu said we will not work with Verisign. It would probably just mean new registrations would be under a new agreement if there were one but it will be interesting to see what ENOM says about the registration period.
What I mean Greg is the contract is to 2016 what about people in 2015 who reg for two years, I do not believe anyone would void the second year. But it will be interesting to hear what ENOM says about it, actually Verisign would be more interesting.
I run DotTVnation.tv so I would say it makes sense. No country sells the CCTLD, they sell the rights to market it, promote it. That's all I am saying, Greg is worried about a 10 year reg going to 2018 and what if TUVALU gives the rights to someone else and the reg fee is $200 a year for any domain like a .md or .tm or .ki which is $1295 a year no need to be a premium registration.
Don't I feel stupid! Sorry, didn't know that. I should have.
It still doesn't make sense to me. The dot tv corp had a deal for indefinately and verisign bought the rights for only 15 years when they bought out the .tv corp?
I'll try to explain. The domain ".TV" is the ccTLD assigned to the Country of Tuvalu. Verisign has a deal with Tuvalu that is "Finite". At the end of the deal, Tuvalu can make another deal, or they may decide to manage the domain on their own. They may decide to raise renewals to $500/Yr or more.
I think it's almost certain they will raise the price significantly. After all, their island is sinking, and by then thousands of website owners will be faced with either keeping their domain name or using another extension. In other words, Tuvlau will have everyone by the *****.
Before anyone makes longterm .TV plans, they need to consider these facts. IMO.
__________________ MicroGuy.net - the bumbling misadventures of an aging domainer. ()
I will make two predictions, one of which will be correct.
1) You will get NO response.
or
2) You will get a response that doesn't pointedly address your question with a specific answer that will make you feel like you have learned anything other than what has been said already.
Probably right Bulldog, they are clueless, I was on the phone with them mentioning drop lists and premium renewals. OK the woman is clueless, she puts in a ticket, they say you can only get renewal info on your own domain. I say ahead.tv has all info, Technical Support gets back, "Yeah we don't know how Ahead.tv has our info."
Well that is a good point TLD, Verisign contract to 2012 on .com you can reg for 10 years.
VeriSign would also have to continue to offer 10-year registrations, so buyers can lock-in their price. The company would also be banned from "tying" its registration services to any of its other products, Twomey said.
Yesterday night, I went on to Verisign's site and I clicked on the "Live Chat" to talk to one of their representatives. The forum posts about the contract with Verisign expiring in 2016 and the possibility of renewals (of regular .tv domains) going up to insane amounts at the will of Tuvalu/a greedy corporation greatly alarms me about the .TV extension.
Actually, I am even worried that Verisign will become greedy and start raising renewal prices at will, before their contract with Tuvalu runs out. This is something that's really backward about the way Domain Extensions are managed right now. , if you let people from around the world register domains in your TLD, then it becomes a public resource. The domain owners need to have more of a say in how the TLDs they own domains in are managed, especially in major decisions like who the contract to run the TLD is assigned to, and this is not just a problem about ccTLDs like .TV, but also a problem with gTLDs like .com, .net (I don't trust ICANN to look out for us).
Well, I went on the Live Chat and here is my conversation with them.
Well, I hope to get a response from Verisign's management soon.
They have promised to email me.
I hope they don't try to get around answering my questions by giving me canned responses. The lack of transparency in the management of TLDs which I see as public assets, is frustrating. This is especially true in ccTLDs like .TV...at least with gTLDs, ICANN has to publish the documents of for example, the contracts with the registries.
It's unjust that corporations seem to have the power to raise renewal fees at will and especially, take away all the hard work of people who've built websites on the domain names (search engine rankings, repeat visitors will be all gone if the domain is lost) if they cannot afford the exorbitant renewal fees to keep their domain.
Why doesn't a moderator from NP try to get a VP from Enom to answer
to us directly ? ... we can start a petition if it helps and collectively
we can maybe get them to listen to their customers. What do you guys
and gals say ?
__________________ cityforum.com -
Do you have your own cityforum ?
Toronto, Montreal, Hyderabad and Los Angeles are now taken. Send a PM if you wish to join us with your city in this group development project. Free Hosting.
) 
, if you let people from around the world register domains in your TLD, then it becomes a public resource. The domain owners need to have more of a say in how the TLDs they own domains in are managed, especially in major decisions like who the contract to run the TLD is assigned to, and this is not just a problem about ccTLDs like .TV, but also a problem with gTLDs like .com, .net (I don't trust ICANN to look out for us).