Tiny Tuvalu cashes in on '.tv' domains

Under the terms of the agreement, the archipelago will receive $50 million over the next dozen years; the contract will be renegotiated in 2012.

The Tuvalu islands have already garnered $15 million dollars from the deal, enough to transform the existence of a country where the annual budget tops out at $14 million per year.

The per-capita revenue of the 10,600 residents is on its way to becoming one of the highest on the planet, up from an average of $400.

In 1998, Tuvalu closed a deal with Canada's TV Corp., but that agreement fell through. The current deal is with Idealab!, a startup incubator based in Pasadena, Calif. One of its portfolio companies, dubbed DotTV, will auction off URLs ending in ".tv."

Proposed addresses include letters of the alphabet (a.tv, b.tv, etc.) as well as names such as "pepsi.tv" and "marilynmonroe.tv."

Gaëlle Vacher reports for ZDNet France. Translation by Matthew Rothenberg, ZDNet News.