.fi Registration

The .fi extension is for companies and organizations registered in Finland and for Finnish nationals. It is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) bestowed by FICORA, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority. The .fi was formed as a result of an application sent in December 4, 1986 by Finnish UNIX Users Group from Tampere to register the top-level domain for Finland. The application was accepted granted to Tampere University of Technology for the administration of .fi TLD. Later the management was transferred first to FICIX and ultimately to FICORA.

The .fi domains regulation by FICORA in the past was extremely strict as they allowed domain names only to companies that owned trademarks. Due to this strict policy many Finnish companies applied for domains under other top-level domains. As a result the policy was changed on September 1, 2003. Now, any person with Finnish Personal Identity Number or living in Finland can apply. The presence of business ID code of the company/organization or the registration number of the association is a prerequisite for domain registration. Public corporations such as the state, municipalities, the province of Aland, municipal federations and constitutional communities are also eligible for .fi registration.

Since March 1, 2006, private individuals also began to apply for a .fi domain name. Even with liberalization of name restriction, some other restrictions still apply such as companies concerned can apply only for their legitimate company names or trademarks. And according to dispute policies of FICORA, names can be suspended or cancelled by the registry if suspected to be a violation of another's name. It can also be withdrawn if it is a derivative of a registered name or trademark. The revoked domain name will be available for re-application after three months. A .fi name can consist of 2-63 characters from A to Z, or 0 to 9 and the dash (-). Names cannot begin or end in a dash. Native language characters can be included in the names for .fi registration.