What are top level domains (TLD's)?

In the past, the three-letter top-level domains were .COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU, .INT, .MIL and .GOV. The first three are operated on commercial principles, while the last four have restrictive conditions on who can register names in those domains. In addition, there are two-letter top-level domains for each country i.e .co.uk, and a special domain .ARPA which currently contains some Internet infrastructure databases. In a meeting held on 16 November 2000, the ICANN Board selected seven new top-level domains (TLDs) for negotiation of agreements.

What are the seven new TLD's?

What about .TV, .FM or .AM?

.TV is the TLD indicator assigned to the country of Tuvalu, a small island in the pacific ocean. Through an agreement with Tuvalu, The .TV Corporation became the exclusive registry and registrar for names in the .TV domain. The .TV domain is the fastest growing domain of all time and many thousands of businesses that have a "rich media" presence on the Web are using this domain to offer media rich content i.e audio/video streaming, animation e.t.c. There are no general restrictions on registration or usage.

.TV is available now at a cost of £45.00 per year and can be registered for periods of 1-10 yrs.

.FM is the indicator assigned to the Federated States of Micronesia. Generally used for people in the broadcasting industry. As with .TV, there are no general restrictions on registration or usage.

.FM domains are available now at a cost of £200.00 per two year registration fee, please contact us to discuss dot AM pricing or orders for more than one domain.

Finding a Suitable Domain Name: Most registries provide public information on domain registrations, including contact details of domain registrants, via the WHOIS service. It's right and proper that such information should be freely available, but unfortunately it means it's also available to spammers and other mass marketers who abuse the service using software to automatically build contact databases from the registry WHOIS. A few registries have avoided this problem by simply not providing a WHOIS database, others offer a WHOIS service but protect it from mass marketers by requiring users to open an account and log in, in order to use the service.

If you wish to register one of these premium domain names you can simply e-mail Fast-Name here describing yourself/your business, it's objectives and the domain suffix (.tv, .fm e.t.c) required, Fast-Name will then compile a list of suitable domains which you can register on our site as you would with any other domain.

The Pre-Registration Scam?

Fast-Name are aware that many of our competitors are offering "pre-registration" of the new TLD's. According to ICANN, the government appointed group that oversees Internet Name registration, using pre-registration services wasn't advisable because no one was authorised to pre-register domain names. Based on this ICANN statement and the fact that nobody that we aware of is offering pre-registration without specifying a non-refundable deposit, Fast-Name are also suspicious. At Fast-Name we only sell what we can deliver!!

When will Fast-name start selling these new domains?

Fast-name are already providing .biz, .info, and .tv domains. As soon as we can guarantee the other extensions we will make them available to our customers.