Finland, a country I was fortunate to visit just last month (my thoughts), has just become the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right.
According to YLE.fi, starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection, says the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
Finland is reportedly the world’s first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access. The government had already decided to make a 100 Mb broadband connection a legal right by the end of 2015.
Other European countries including Belgium and the UK are considering making broadband access available for all. The fast growth of technology has led the European Commission to bring forward a review of the basic telecoms services Europeans can expect.
Current statistics suggest about 36% of households in EU member nations have high-speed net access. When a majority of EU citizens are using a telecoms service, EC law dictates that it becomes one every European should be able to enjoy.
Wonderful to see Europe be at the forefront of such regulation, lets hope other countries soon follow suit.
Interesting. I think that it is a good idea. Maybe make it a wireless. I don’t know how easy that would be for potential hackers to take advantage of this. I like the idea personally. Although here in the U.S, you can get free internet simply by going to your local library. Good article. Peace.
Two Voices | Two Guys
No wonder this happens first in a country like Finland! Good for the people in this country. This indocates what is becoming every citizen’s legal right in the 21st century.
One can compare this right to the right to have access to clean healthy water for every citizen. May this become a right for everybody else, specially in the developing world!
Finland has a lot of outback forrests. We will see how the most distant places will get their broadband.
“one-megabit broadband connection” – one megabit is considered slow these days! Writing from Croatia, country 10 times less developed than Finland, and here 8 or even 16 mbit adsl is standard. On one megabit it takes ages to download something! Just my 2eurocents.
Great news… hope other countries follow soon….
Daemon: It is true that 1mbit does not seem a lot and people are using speeds up to 100 times faster nowadays… but, can every person in Croatia regardles where they live enjoy this 8 or 16mbit adsl? As far as I know he speed of adsl drops with distance and it is impossible to reach even 1mbit over a distance of 5km with good condition telephone lines…
Daemon: you have to see the emphasis on “legal right”. A 10mbit cable costs like 10€ in Finland, 100mbit hardly much more where it’s available, so pretty much anyone can afford that.. I think what they’re trying to achieve is full coverage and of course a little show off :)
And darn.. in Ireland you’re happy if you get 1-2Mbit with “only” 24:1 sharing ratio and a 10GB transfer limit instead of 5.. This is pathetic!
10mbit cable DOES NOT cost 10€ here, it’s three times more. And it’s still too much, because the wiring in here is from the 50′s.
Operators here charge for the 10mbit but the speed really is half of the marketed, on a regular basis. Although the speed might be 10mbit if none use the same server and the server is next to you…
Tack för credd! Men länken är fel.
Rätt länk är: http://chefredaktorer.collected.at/Besvara :Citera
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@Petra – Ã… tack! Ändrat nu.Besvara :@PetraCitera
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actually i was thinking about this today oddly enough, so im glad to see this
“10mbit cable DOES NOT cost 10€ here, it’s three times more. And it’s still too much, because the wiring in here is from the 50’s.”
Yep. You did not have the link to the news so I could not read it. I live in Finland and what they are talking about is the you have right to have access to broadband. You still have to pay if you take it, and in Finland its expensive. (distances are long, and prices are high)
What they are realy doing here is this new shitty tax. You have to pay this TV tax if you own a tv, and that money supports the goverments tv-station. Now they are planning a “media tax” that you should pay even if you dont own tv, internet or radio, about 250e a year, because goverment says anybody has somekind of access to these servies. I think it´s just robbery.
Absolut är det bättre att scrolla än bara skriva ingresser, på samma sätt som det enda vettiga är att skriva ut hela inlägg + bilder (bilderna är viktiga) på rss-feeden.
De som inte har det blir inte långlivade i min reader.
Sen att jag ändå förmodligen skulle vara för lat att läsa ett så långt inlägg är en annan sak. Jag föredrar bloggar med små och korta inlägg.Besvara :Citera
This comment was originally posted on Same Same But Different
That’s terrible policy.
When you decide were to live you make the trade-off between the various drawbacks and benefits of choosing where to live. If you decide to live in the middle of nowhere, the cost of installing broadband may be completely unacceptable to you. If that is the case you shouldn’t have access to broadband or you should reconsider your choice of where to live.
I live in a city. I might like to have access to horse riding or playing drums really loud without anyone calling the police, but it costs me way to much to procure those things in the city, so I have to abstain. The state should not come in and steal from country dwellers to fund my horse riding hobby, it should not steal from city and suburb dwellers to fund broadband out in the middle of nowhere, the state should not provide subsidised insurance against natural disasters; that’s like a bad mother that pays here children to run with scissors.
This is extremely worrying. If the government has control over the right to internet access then they will claim the right to regulate it. Of course, this has massive bearings with regards to net neutrality.
What a surprise it is for the EU to be at the forefront of this…