Along with clean, safe drinking water and universal health care, broadband Internet access is now a fundamental human right – if you live in Finland.
The Scandinavian nation became the first in the world to mandate that a specified level of broadband access be available to all businesses and residences, after new provisions in the country’s Communications Market Act took effect today. Wireless or wireline, the connection speed must be at least 1 Mbps, and the subscription price must be “reasonable.” Finland’s Communications Regulatory Authority (FICORA) defines a reasonable charge as between €30 and €40, or $36 to $49, per month, but the agency has no authority to set a specific price cap on broadband access.
“We considered the role of the Internet in Finns' everyday life,” communication minister Suvi Linden told the BBC. “Internet services are no longer just for entertainment."
Finland, which already has a 96-percent penetration rate for broadband access, “has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realized not everyone had access," added Linden.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi also said it will make available 100Mbps links to all citizens by 2015.
While Finland is the first nation to pass legislation requiring broadband access for all, a few nations, including Singapore and South Korea, have achieved effective broadband penetration rates of 99-plus percent. The new coalition government of the U.K. has said it will honor the previous Labour Party government’s commitment to supplying 2Mbps links to everyone in the country, but that is not legally binding.
In the U.S. meanwhile, where broadband penetration rates languish in the low 60-percent range, behind many other developed economies, the FCC is locked in a political battle over its authority to regulate broadband service at all, much less guarantee it for every citizen. While it calls for universal broadband access and sets out a series of initiatives and incentives to get there, the FCC’s National Broadband Plan does not mandate any specific requirements for universal service or minimum bandwidth rates.
