Starting Monday, anyone in the world will be able to register a .fi domain name – whether you have a Finnish company or not. The change made in connection with that, also stated that FICORA, the Finnish registry responsible for the TLD .fi, are incorporating a new business model. This is quite a big change. First and foremost, the first contact for anyone wishing to register a .fi address will no longer be with FICORA (governed by the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority), but with individual registrars instead.
This is the same model that we have in Sweden (and several other countries), where for example we att Binero are resellers of .se addresses, while the foundation called Internetstiftelsen (IIS) is the registry that manages the operation and development of the TLD. Similarly, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority continue to be responsible for the technical function of the .fi TLD, and monitor and ensure that the .fi registrars (resellers) are providing services of adequate quality.
Another big change is that FICORA also will release a large number of previously reserved .fi addresses – many of which should be really attractive. For example a lot of domain names with only two letters will be released (addresses like pr.fi and se.fi are available), aswell as extremely general and often industry-related addresses, like hotels.fi and trademark.fi.
This also means that the previous statutory right of a .fi domain name that is a combination of a persons own first and last name, comes to an end. It is thus free to apply for combinations of first and last names (firstnamelastname.fi) in the future. But the biggest news is of course that anyone can apply for a .fi domain name, regardless of whether your business is based only in Sweden (or anywhere else in the world).
This is what you need to keep track of:
On September 2, 2016 at 16:15 all user accounts in the current domain name service will be closed.
On September 5, 2016 at 10:00 the new domain name service for registrars who have signed up will open. Binero is, of course, one of them, which means that you can immediately start registering your .fi domain names through us.
On September 7, 2016 at. 10:00 domain names previously kept reserved will be released.
From 10 am on Monday, Binero will offer you to register your .fi addresses through us. The price is 129:- SEK per domain name. So take the weekend to think about what addresses you need and contact us on Monday!