Finland the first country in the world to make broadband access a legal right
By Laura June 
posted July 1st 2010 12:25PM
posted July 1st 2010 12:25PM
posted July 1st 2010 12:25PM
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@dyyz Meh. You forgot 100/100mbps for 19.90€ ;)
At last! It better be on paper as nowadays you need the internets to go to school. Almost everything is online; some companies have let go of paper bills altogether so without internet accessing your billing would be difficult.
What you have everyone forgotten is now that internet connection is a legal right in Finland (just like tv and telephone) social service will pay it for poor people...
Engadget "knew this was coming" because of today's story? Fix your link Engadget, I want to see your previous story.
"now consider internet access a basic requirement of daily life," just an excuse to move all government services online and that its citizen don't get to interact with another human being for services. It would never work for here in the States where we still have people who don't read or write.
@qb2000 Actually, it's the other way around. As the government has started offering possibilities to take care of business online (for some time now. 5-10 years), more and more people are using those, thus making the people driven places obsolete (not yet but that will happen).
Since when do governments grant citizens rights? Our rights are endowed upon us by our creator, according to the Declaration of Independence and many other ancient texts written on the subject. Government cannot grant a right, especially one like this, as it infringes on another person's rights (ie, privately held companies who may own the infrastructure). Even if the infrastructure is all public sector already, I still hold steady to the fact that governments do not create rights.
Also, why stop at 1Gbps connections? If the Government of Finland can proclaim anything a right and It Shall Be, then why not just come out swinging at 1Tbps? What's to keep them from demanding 1 petabit per second? If the Government so commands...
@otaku Oh yeah, like any invisible sky man has ever given me anything. That fairy in my garden sure is a nice girl though.
@otaku Humor me. What does US constitution have to do with laws made in Finland? I'm confused. As far as I see it, what you decide to call "right" in your constitution has ABSOLUTELY ZILCH to do with what we decide to call it with. Jesus..
What most people are overlooking is the fact of the recent change in the TV license system in Finland. They are now changing it to a media license (which is based on networked media), which means everybody with an internet connection must pay even though they do not own a TV let alone care to watch the programs chosen by YLE, the Finnish broadcasting company. Which makes a lot of people sick here as YLE will receive the money that is collected by this charge and last time I checked they were not the creators of all of the media available on the net.
Im Still on a 512 Kbps Connection. but most new housing estates in Australia offer 100 Mbps fiber connection.
It really aggravates me when I see people calling things like this a right. If you think that it makes sense for people to have access to the internet because its good for the country as a whole, that's fine. But for God's sake, STOP calling it a RIGHT.
Rights don't depend on someone else's benevolence or coercion by the government. Rights are abilities that are inherent to you as a consequence of your simply being alive and human.
All of the examples I have seen people use to support this "internet as a right" nonsense are confusing rights with CONVENIENCES. Healthcare isn't a right unless you can provide it for yourself. Other than that, it's a convenience mandated by the government because it is better for the country to have healthy people. Similarly, Medicare and Social Security are not rights. They are CONVENIENCES put in place because the government feels that they are necessary to provide for the general welfare.
Anyone who doubts me...just answer this question: Would it be legal for the US government to pass a law eliminating Medicare and Social Security?
The answer is absolutely it would be legal. And if they can take it away from you, it is not a right. It is just a benefit that they provide at their discretion.
Similarly, the Finish government could decide tomorrow that the internet is too expensive to provide for everyone and therefore is no longer a right.
So PLEASE, stop confusing rights with mere privileges and conveniences.
@techngro The legislation was set in FINLAND, in FINNISH. Ever stopped to consider that the word "right" (or "oikeus" in Finnish) just might ring a teensy different bell in Finnish? True, the word-to-word translation to "oikeus" is "right" (thus the article is correct) but the meaning might just be a little bit different. I mean, it's constantly talked as a "oikeus" in here and so far I haven't seen a SINGLE person complaining about it. Get over it!
http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
43 Australia 6.71 Mbps
I wish I got that much at home :(
First off, I don't think all of you understand what the article is saying. Some of you are misinterpreting the article to think that everyone in Finland can get 1Mbps internet for free. That is NOT what they're saying at all. They are saying that anyone on any part of any area of Finland now has the ABILITY to get 1Mbps internet.
Remember, not everyone lives in a city or even a town! There are some people who cannot get faster than dial-up or perhaps satellite internet and sometimes satellite isn't available because of trees or the specific area you're in and maybe the satellite internet that's available doesn't offer 1Mbps internet. Finland is giving every single Finnish person the ability to get internet access of at least 1Mbps and it looks to be the start of a great new era of technology.
Internet is becoming a huge part of peoples lives and many depend on it for work, telephone service and many other things. There are many people in America unable to get access to high speed Internet because they live to far out of the city. I feel everyone deserves the right have access to the faster service.
Would you say landline telephone service is not a necessity? Well it is considered one just like electricity, though none of these things are truly needed to live. Internet is now just as important as these items.
That's it, I'm moving to Finland.
@Lee IV Wanna share a place? Find a couple of warm ladies? I'd just call you Buddy Lee, can't bust'em!
People. Very strong opinions based on hubris. The meat of this "Right" is that if you want to be in ISP business, you cannot choose your customers. If you want to be an ISP, you must be able to provide your services to anyone who asks. It's a glitch in translation from Finnish to English that it comes out as "Right" in the sense of the word that most reads of Engadget are accustomed to. Basically, you read something which isn't entirely accurate and jump the gun and rant about thing that isn't really the way you think it is. Calm down.
Secondly, from my point of view, this news is not interesting. The interesting news is that in matter of few months I can get 1000/1000 connection for less than 100 euros/month from SONERA. Currently I have 200/10 for €49.95. I am more than happy with the downstream bandwidth. The problem is that I could use more upstream; it would enable new interesting use-cases for the connection. =)
http://www.sonera.fi/laajakaista/laajakaista+kotiin/1000+megaa
In case someone wonders; no, we don't have traffic limits for the connections. The 200/10 I use actually works at that speed, I get actually ~10% faster connection (220/11) in practise .. they seem to leave a bit of headroom so that avoid customer complaints (people are easy to switch ISP's here since there is a lot of choise & competition).
So the "Right" to have 1 Mbit _minimum_ upstream is just Government regulation on the business. It's not unfair AT ALL considering that government owned telco used to build the network (copper) years ago and novadays the telco's are privately owned and are cutting people off their grid for higher profit margins. The ideas is that they at least offer measely xDSL service through the existing copper. They are moving to all-fiber connections to the last mile in bigger cities and shutting down the copper networks in the remote areas as it's more cost-effective (everyone is using GSM/wireless anyway).
If they really shut down the copper network that was built on tax money in the first place, the cost-effective alternative is to use wireless technology to provide the 1/512, that's piece of cake. They have the towers and links anyway, just need to upgrade the modems .. most places have 3G coverage anyhow, that's good enough to satisfy the letter of the law. The Right doesn't dictate that the connection has to be wired the last time I checked.
After all, there is regulation on commerce and industry in the US and elsewhere in the world, too, right? Don't confuse this with some kind of Divine or Civil Right issue, thanks?
Ha ha!!! What a nice joke!!! In a country 1Mbps is a legal right to people, in another contry like IRAN WE ARE ILLEGAL TO USE A CONNECTION HIGHER THAN 128Kbps, yes it is true, JUST 128Kbps=16KBps and the whole of internet is FILTERED and CENSORED. YES, THIS IS THE RIGHT FOR US....
Complexities will get clearer along the journey for this basic right of broadband, but consider this, gaps have always created problems and issues in the third world countries, information gap is a big problem, internet is one thing that is easy to set up and will educate precisely and efficiently over the time.
Let there be light!
Mohtasham Khan
mohtashammm@gmail.com
(you may contact directly)
That news is not actually true 100%.
The first country with internet xDSL legal right was Switzerland (yeah, still in Europe).