The tiny, financially strapped Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu has cashed in on the alphabetic quirk that assigned it with the ubiquitous ".tv" Internet country code.

DotTV has agreed to pay Tuvalu $50 million in royalties over the next decade for use of the country code. The Internet start-up intends to sell the rights to Web addresses ending in ".tv," such as www.abc.tv or www.lawandorder.tv. "It's the most recognizable two-letter symbol on the planet," DotTV chief Lou Kerner said. "When you marry 'dot' with 'TV,' you become something very meaningful on the Internet." In a test earlier this week, Kerner said, he sold 200 Internet names ending in ".tv" for about $300,000. The record price for an Internet address is $7.5 million, paid by a Texas company last year for www.business.com. DotTV's minimum quarterly payment of $1 million to Tuvalu--nine atolls located halfway between Hawaii and Australia-- will be the single- largest source of income for the nation of 10, 600. "We were very, very, very poor, but now we are getting some money from the marketing of assets like dot-tv," said Koloa Talake, a member of Tuvalu's parliament who helped negotiate the deal.