Interview with Ficora, Nordic Domain Days 2015

“We hope that more people abroad will get interested in .FI-domains!”

Interview with Juhani Juselius (Head of Products and Services) and Kirsi Sunila-Putilin (Legal Counsel), Ficora.

What’s your expectation for .FI-domain names, 2016?

– We are having a big change when it comes to the regularization for .FI-domain names, which means that we will move to a pure Registry-Registrar model. (Editorial note: this means for example that Ficora no longer longer require local presence for .FI-domain names). I have very high hopes for what this will make to our business and the amount of registered .FI-domains. We will try to be a more attractive partner for registrars and we also hope that more people abroad will get interested in .FI-domains.

Why are you changing to a Registry-Registrar model?

– Actually there are quite many reasons behind this decision. One is increased competition in the future, due to the new TLDs. Another reason is internal. We found that some operational procedures became quite old fashioned and needed to change.

How do you think the domain industry will change in the next five years?

– I think Registrars are getting more power just because the number of Registry’s increasing, and they can choose more freely with whom they are doing business. Registry’s must adapt as well, they have to get out of their comfort zone and develop their processes to be a better partner for Registrars.

And Kirsi, from a legal perspective, what is the big challenge with this Registry-Registrar model?

– I have to say that I am wondering about the dispute resolution. Will there be more cases or not, when we liberalize? Now we´ve have had an in-house dispute resolution where we decide about cases for free.. what will happen now? And also we will have a new task supervising information securities for Registrars, and we still need to work on how to do that.

Juhani, do you have any estimation of what will happen to the secondary market for .FI-domains, when making this change?

– Hard to say, but I think that domainers will be more interested in .FI-domains than they have been before. And I am not only seeing this as a bad thing; in my opinion this is just one way of doing business. If domainers buy domains that no one is using and then try to sell it for a higher price… It’s kind of marketing for Registrar’s as well!

And, Kirsi, what do you think?

– There’s a lot of Registry’s not supervising for the purpose of delivery and it has been difficult and energy consuming to do so. Now we are adjusting our processes to a more standardized model.

Editorial note: The Registry-Registrar model is the same model that IIS changed to back in 2009. The model means that Registrars will be selling – in this case – .FI-domains, instead of Ficora. For .FI this also means that local presence no longer will be required, and people and businesses outside of Finland can more easily register .FI-domain names.