Internet and e-commerce industry in Finland

Finland is the Nordic country, located in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. The country is neighboring Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. Finland is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. It has a highly industrialized free-market economy with a per capita output equal to that of other western economies such as France, Germany, Belgium or the UK. Finland is highly integrated in the global economy, and international trade is a third by GDP. Finland is famous worldwide for its amazing capital Helsinki, Alpine ski resorts, thousands of lakes and islands that attract millions of tourists. Moreover, Finland lures foreigners as a native land of Santa, in Lapland, situated in the extreme north of the country. Aliens are also attracted by Finnish sauna bath, phishing and yachting. And what about the development of ICT infrastructure and e-commerce sector in this country of winter, mountains and sauna bath?

Finland ICT market is relatively small, however it’s advanced enough as it appeared to be one of the earliest adopter of high technologies. Commercially broadband Internet came to Finland in 2000 in the form of ADSL connection services. The largest Finnish Internet service providers include:

• Elisa Oyj
• Saunalahti
• Sonera
• Finnet
• OPOY

The national incumbent, Sonera, has maintained its dominant position on telecommunication market after it was privatized. Currently, Sonera is a leader of data communications business in Finland, including Internet and broadband services. Sonera provides 10/10 Mbit Cisco Long Reach Ethernet in select apartment buildings for prices ranging from 39€ to 50€. Sonera has also started installing fiber optic connections in major areas of Finland, providing a speed up to 100/10 Mbit, albeit also exclusive to apartment buildings.

Saunalahti, using aggressive marketing, brought full-rate ADSL (8/1 Mbit/s) to the capital area and Turku in 2004. The company also announced ADSL2 services (12 Mbit/s) available in the capital area and Turku later the same year 2004. Saunalahti also was the very first to present ADSL2+ services (24 Mbit/s) in Nordic countries in 2004, that was originally available only in the Tampere region.

OPOY(Oulun Puhelin Plc), has been providing for a longer time full-rate ADSL (8/1 Mbit/s) and VDSL (10/10 Mbit/s, actually Cisco Long Reach Ethernet) in the city of Oulu.

Besides, Finland has an extensive cable network in urban areas, and also a limited WLAN and broadband powerline presence. Such internet connection services as FttH, powerline broadband, wireless broadband, WiFi and Internet via satellite together with developments in related technologies are also available in the country.

As for to date, typical ADSL connections offered in Finland are 1024/512 Kbit/s or 2048/512 Kbit/s . Faster speeds, such as 8/1 Mbit/s, 24/1 Mbit/s and faster are also widely used.

In October 2009, Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications has committed to ensuring that every person in Finland will be able to get Internet access at a minimum speed of 1 Mbit/s since July 2010.

Broadband penetration in Finland has always been far ahead of the EU average, caused by the country’s take-up of new fixed-line technologies such as DSL has been fragmented, with very different regional experiences. Thus, by the second half of 2009 the volume of Finnish user almost reached 85% with almost 4,5mn subscribers. That may be compared to the previous digits of 37% with almost 2mn users in 2000 and over 60% with over 3mn users in 2006. So the growth made up nearly 130%, according to the internetworldstats.com. As for the Internet usage age structure, it’s important to say that the majority of Finlanders applying to the web for different purposes are aged between 15-64 years, almost 79%, the correlation of male and female volume is almost fifty-fifty are almost the same.

The high level of broadband penetration as well as advanced ICT sector let Finland to take place amid the European and world leaders in terms of Internet progress.

By the way Finland is a native land for Linus Torvalds, a famous Finnish software engineer, best known for creating the kernel of the Linux operating system.

Country’s Internet code top-level domain (ccTLD) is .fi, operated by FICORA, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority. Previously, FICORA’s .fi domains regulation was very strict. Domain names were only admitted to company names or companies that owned trademarks. This policy caused Finnish companies to apply for domains under other top-level domains. This policy was changed on in 2003.

.fi was originally best known among non-Finnish internet users as the domain of the Penet remailer (anon.penet.fi), a privately operated server letting users send e-mail and Usenet messages anonymously in the early 1990s.

Since 2005, .fi domains may contain Scandinavian letters (ä, å, ö), though they are still not recommended to be used as the primary domain. In 2006, individuals got an ability to apply for a domain name. As for now, the number of restrictions remain valid, for instance, company names or trademarks can only be applied for by the companies concerned. Moreover, foreign corporations cannot apply for domain names unless they have a branch entered in the Finnish Trade Registry.

Notably, Finnish can also be registered under .ax ccTLD, Åland Islands domain, that was introduced in 2006. Previously, most Åland websites were under the .aland.fi subdomain.

Two year registration agreement for .fi ccTLD is rather expensive, $550, while for .ax is even more expensive - $599 that is considerably higher the prices in the other European countries, $35 in UK, $89 in Spain, $139 in Denmark and even $270 in Luxemburg). (http://www.rwgusa.com)

As for the purposes Finlanders are applying to the Internet the leading positions are occupied by the targets of looking for information about goods and services and sending emails (over 67% each item) and internet banking (almost 63%), followed by reading online newspapers/magazines(46%) and playing/downloading games and music(33%). And Finnish users are less interested in, but still apply to, listening to the web radio/watching web TV (20%) and Internet telephoning or videoconferencing (14%), according to Economist Intelligence Unit.

Besides, Finland can boast the second highest connectivity for enterprises in the EU, according to a new EU report. With a workforce ranking amongst the most skilled in Europe, at both the basic and expert level, e-business practices are well developed and above the EU average.

Finland also reflects the highest use of public internet access points in Europe. The steady conversion to broadband is fuelled by intensive network competition and a wide range of internet services, which also corresponds with a take up of online multimedia and content. Despite the country has relatively small online music market, it’s highly competitive making Finland to have the highest measure of commercial downloads.

Finland ranks 5th among the EU countries for e-commerce industry, generating about 14.3% of total enterprise turnover. Meanwhile, improvement process is still to last, and a new IT security strategy is supposed to boost business and consumer confidence in electronic services.

Finnish e-commerce sector can be represented by the following companies composing just a small part of full range of the country’s e-commerce market:

• Media- Wolf - Based in Lapua - offers web media, multimedia, TV commercials and company videos.
• Total Management - Internet marketing company with offices in Helsinki and Tampere.
• MaDiStudio - Website design and programming company specializing in dynamic content management.
• Freddi Com Ltd - offers e-commerce solutions in combination with web design as well as application programming. Information on the company and their services.
• Olive – Promises to help to create successful e-commerce model and identify technical requirements, prior to developing a powerful e-commerce platform around a robust infrastructure.

Being among the European Internet leaders, Finland still continues development and enhancement of its ICT infrastructure. Despite it’s a country of specific culture and old traditions, it doesn’t lag in terms of its hi-tech and e-commerce penetration. Finland even managed to outstrip majority of its neighbors.