tucows

Tucows is a company that works to keep people connected and the Internet accessible. With its corporate headquarters in Toronto, Canada, and its incorporation in Pennsylvania, Tucows is an American-Canadian publicly listed Internet solutions and telecommunications firm.

About The Company

Tucows provides SaaS, Fiber Internet Services, and web domain services through its three independent businesses named Tucows Domains, Ting, and Wavelo. As the second-biggest domain registrar in the world and the largest domain name broker, Tucows Domains assists people in creating their websites online. It operates Hover, OpenSRS, and Ascio. Ting Internet, provide communities all across the country with high-speed fibre internet access. Wavelo provides software for telecom billing and operations for Fiber Internet Services and Mobile Virtual Network Operators.

History

Tucows was established in 1993 as a site for downloading freeware and shareware software. In 1996, the company was acquired by Internet Direct. In 1999, STI Ventures bought Tucows. A deal between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN in April of that year put an end to Network Solutions’ monopoly on domain name registration. After obtaining ICANN permission to operate as a domain registrar, It started registering domains for around $13, far less than the initial industry starting price of around $70. In 2000, It introduced the OpenSRS system and entered the arena of wholesale domain name registrations. The OpenSRS system turned become Tucows’ profitable venture, and it made ten times as much money as the entire company did in 1999. In 2001, Tucows announced that it will start issuing multilingual domain names, enabling consumers all around the world to buy domains in their local alphabets. Tucows offered around 70 accessible languages. Later in 2001, the company launched Liberty Registry Management Services (LibertyRMS), which provided so-called “generic top-level” website domains like.info. Later, LibertyRMS was sold by Tucows to Afilias. On August 28, The Company merged with Infonautics, a publicly listed online information services provider that ran the free Encyclopedia.com and subscription-based article database Electric Library. This was a significant development as It was able to go public without having to do an IPO because of this all-stock arrangement. Ownership of Infonautics was transferred to Tucows stockholders, and the combined business, which had a $41 million market value, took the name Tucows Inc.

Controversies

For the first time, the USTR included Tucows on its yearly “notorious markets” list in 2015 to serve as an example for domain name registrars who fail to prohibit or suspend sites that offer illicit items. In response, Tucows stated that although it regularly suspended dozens of websites, “unlike certain competitors, it thoroughly investigated all complaints to guarantee they were justified.” It previously served as the registrar of domain names for the controversial American message board 8chan, which Google delisted for harboring child pornography and where several swatting incidents and terrorist plots, including the 2019 New Zealand Terrorist Attack, were disclosed and plotted by users. Additionally, the company serves as the domain name registrant for the white supremacist website Stormfront and the social media network Truth Social. The company devised a plan in 2021 to describe their involvement in addressing domain name misuse.

Founder – Scott Swedorski

In 1991, Flint native Scott Swedorski began serving as the Mott Community College’s computer lab manager. Swedorski noticed a need to make shareware reviews available to the general public before the end of 1992 when he left Mott College to work as the system admin for FALCON at the Genesee County Library System. He founded TUCOWS (The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software) in 1993.

CEO – Elliot Noss

Elliot Noss is the CEO of Tucows. He has advocated, agitated, and educated to support and defend an Open Internet throughout the world through his work at Tucows, his participation in ICANN, and his initiatives.