Finland grants 5.2m souls the right to 1Mb internet

Finland has granted its inhabitants the legal right to a one-megabit broadband connection.

As reported by the national broadcaster YLE, the Ministry of Transport and Communications announced yesterday that every Finn will have the right to a 1MB connection in July of next year. Previously, the government had promised 100Mb connections to the country's 5.2 million inhabitants by 2015. Today's announcement is dubbed an "intermediary step."

"We think [the net is] something you cannot live without in modern society," ministry spokesman Laura Vikkonen told The Telegraph. "Like banking services or water or electricity, you need an internet connection.

"Universal service is every citizen's subjective right."

Earlier this year, France declared net access a "human right," but Finland - population 5.2 million - is the first country on the planet to guarantee broadband access. As it stands, 95 percent of those Finns already have an internet connection of one kind or another.

Meanwhile, the US can't even decide what broadband is, and the FCC is still 125 days from delivering its broadband-juicing plan to Congress. ®