Internet in Finland


was created in 1984 to link Finnish universities. The.fi top-level domain was registered 1986. FICIX was created in 1993 to interconnect Finnish IP networks and commercial sales of Internet connection began.
Since July 2010, Finland has become the first country in the world to make Internet access a legal right.

Broadband

Internet access in Finland was launched commercially in 2000 in the form of ADSL. As of 2008, typical ADSL connections 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 available.
In October 2009, Finland's Ministry of Transport and Communications committed to ensuring that every person in Finland can access the Internet at a minimum speed of one megabit per second starting July 2010.
In the city of Oulu, Oulun Puhelin Plc has for a longer time offered full-rate ADSL and VDSL.
With aggressive marketing, Saunalahti brought full-rate ADSL to the capital area and Turku on 2004-08-03. Saunalahti announced ADSL2 services on 2004-10-21, available in the capital area and Turku. Saunalahti also announced the first ever ADSL2+ services in Nordic countries on 15 November 2004, first available only in the Tampere region.
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.
By 2013 commercial fiber optics based connections have become commonplace in major city areas usually distributed in house by VDSL2, speeds of 100/10 Mbit/s usually costing about €30/month, and often available by multiple competing ISPs offered in different packaging. More and more rural towns also have fiber available to residents by government supported and resident self organized projects.

Internet service providers

Some of the largest Finnish Internet service providers include:
Some ISPs are using a voluntary child pornography censorship list administered by the police. The list has been criticised because it has contained legal adult content, that little has been done to actually shut down the illegal websites and, as the list is secret, it can be used for any censorship. More recently, a government-sponsored report has considered establishing similar filtering in order to curb online gambling.
Also, there are legally binding court orders to block The Pirate Bay issued to all major ISPs.