Tucows OpenSRS Launches Multilingual Domain Name Registration Services.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 9, 2000

-Wholesale Registrar Unleashes World's Largest Global Channel To

Offer Registrations In Chinese, Japanese and Korean-

Tucows Inc., the leading wholesale domain name registrar with its Tucows OpenSRS registration service, today began offering its customers domain name registration capabilities in simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Tucows' customers include over 4,000 Managed Service Providers (MSPs), Internet Service Providers, Web hosting companies, Domain Name Resellers and others, all over the world, including hundreds in China, Japan and Korea. With this launch from Tucows, this unique channel of resellers is poised to deliver multilingual domain names to its millions of end user customers worldwide.

Registrations will begin 00:00 GMT Friday, November 10th, 2000. This equates to the following: EST: Thursday, November 9th at 7 PM PST: Thursday, November 9th at 4 PM Beijing: Friday, November 10th at 8 AM Tokyo: Friday, November 10th at 9 AM

Until now, the .com, .net, and .org registries have been limited to registering domain names using a strict ASCII character set. Thus, millions of registrants around the world have been unable to register domain names in their own language, in their own alphabet, even from their own standard computer keyboards. Likewise, registrants who operate primarily in English have been unable to extend their trademark to other languages. However, VeriSign Global Registry Services, a division of VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq:VRSN), the registry operator for .com, .net. and org., has been conducting a certification testbed with all participating registrars to extend the Domain Name System (DNS) to support these new character sets. Tucows earned its certification on October 19 and has been waiting for the registration testbed to begin. That finally happened today.

The Tucows OpenSRS wholesale model was built on the premise that its MSP partners would have a much greater opportunity than the leading retail domain name registrars to understand and serve the specific needs of their own local customers. Tucows believes this advantage should be particularly relevant in the race to register multilingual domain names.

Tucows is also one of the few leading registrars to developed its own conversion solution (in accordance with the Internet Engineering Task Force) to perform multilingual registrations. Tucows believes this will offer its MSP partners several significant advantages over competition that will need to outsource that solution, including greater quality control, stability, and robustness, and, most importantly, maximum flexibility in offering this registration service to end users.

"Internet users around the world have waited for the opportunity to register domain names in their own languages," said Tucows CEO Elliot Noss. "With a superior technical solution and Managed Service Provider partners living and doing business in every market in the world, Tucows is clearly ready to answer the call."

The registration testbed is only the first of two stages. During this first stage, users can register domain names, but cannot resolve them. Resolution is the process by which a domain name is translated into an IP address, allowing Internet users to access Web sites and send email using the name. VeriSign Global Registry Services will be announcing a detailed plan regarding the resolution phase in the near future. Support for domain names in other languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, is also expected soon.

About Tucows

Tucows is a leading distributor of e-business services and applications on the Internet. With a network of more than 4,000 Managed Service Providers (Internet Service Providers, Web hosting companies, Domain Name Resellers and others) in more than 100 countries around the world, we believe Tucows is the largest network of its kind. The Tucows site offers over 30,000 software titles in libraries located around the world, providing users with a fast local download. Tucows Inc. is an ICANN-accredited registrar. Tucows is the leading provider of wholesale domain name registrations and related services in the world. For more information, please visit: http://www.opensrs.org or http://partner.tucows.com or go to http://www.tucows.com and click on Partner Home.