The international body responsible for overseeing internet names has voted to extend VeriSign's tenure as the single registrar of dotcom addresses.
ICANN chairman Mr Vinton Cerf said in return the company will turn over control of 'org' domains to another organisation next year.
Competitors had pressured ICANN over proposals to extend the licence, complaining that VeriSign's position amounts to a monopoly.
Under the new terms VeriSign will be allowed to manage the lucrative dotcom database until 2007, with an option to renew that contract for another four years.
The .com registry is a lucrative business for VeriSign, which gets $6 per name each year, regardless of whether registration is handled by VeriSign itself or by one of more than 100 registrar competitors.
There are more than 21 million .com names claimed, compared with four million for .net and three million for .org.
The changes still need approval from the US Commerce Department, the body that established the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in 1998 to set domain names policy.
Although it rarely overturns ICANN decisions, key members of Congress have urged the agency to evaluate the changes closely.
PA