Just last week I was daydreaming with some friends on what would be an ideal way to spend the rest of our lives. My #1 choice would be to have an old log house somewhere in the wilderness, by a deep, fishy lake, and surrounded by a large forest full of lingoberries, mushrooms and other goodies. The only connection to civilization would be a fibre optic cable the size of my left thigh. (Ok, ok, maybe I'll have a helipad in the backyard for occasional weekend visits to Helsinki, London, NYC).

Well, here it is now. My granny days are secured. Finland just passed a law yesterday that makes having a broadband access a legal, citizen's right. From YLE news:

"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 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. On Wednesday, the Ministry announced the new goal as an intermediary step. Some variation will be allowed, if connectivity can be arranged through mobile phone networks."

The law already caused a lot of buzz in the news. For example the Huffington Post, Techcrunch, PC World applaud and highlight that this is the first in the world.

But Finland wouldn't be Finland unless we had some local people water the news down. Arcticstartup says "so what, it won't be free of charge, and it won't be the government building the network but the telcos". Well, I say "so what if it isn't free of charge, and it's built by the telcos?". There's this funny, persistent nordic/social democratic way of thinking that if something isn't done by the government "free of charge" then it's not really for everyone.

When the telcos are forced to offer broadband everywhere in the country, even in the remote wilderness, they will opt for the mobile solutions. Finland is packed with mobile know-how and companies, so this should be good news for our business ecosystem, too.

Some of these international blogs were using a weird historical image of the Finnish flag with a word "Finlandia" on it. Odd. Our very own YLE has been reading my mind so well it scares me. This laptop is surrounded by those very lingonberry leaves I'm so fond of.


Image: YLE Keski-Suomi / Petteri Juuti