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1Mb Broadband Access Becomes Legal Right In Finland
An anonymous reader writes "Starting next July, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection, according to the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Finland is the world's first country to create laws guaranteeing broadband access. The Finnish people are also legally guaranteed a 100Mb broadband connection by the end of 2015."
Don't they always chant population density as to reason why many people are stuck with dial-up?
In the convenience of your own home, or similar to the right to access clean drinking water you find in some places?
The wording is something to the effect of no household being more than 2 kilometres from a high-speed connection. Are we talking about a pipe to the house, or having to line up to use the communal pump and carry your buckets of bits back home with you?
This news has been written quite loosely around the news sites - original article (in finnish) states that ISP's must be capable of offering reasonably priced, atleast 1Mb broadband to every house. During this year Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority will state who those ISP's are that must be able to provide the services (probably the largest ones). So it's not free, like many seem to think - just reasonably priced (probably around 20-50e/month)
This part yet is not really that interesting since it's already pretty much common place.
However the law also states that the speed of the line must be atleast 75% of the said one during 24 hour measurement period. And what's more interesting is that by 2015 it will be 100mbit. Even though this is already available in the largest cities, it will mean major infrastructure development from the ISP's in other areas.
Oh and btw, no ISP in Finland has transfer limits or such crap. Not even mobile operators, who offer unlimited 5Mbit 3G for something like 30e/month.
Hopefully this also means that those three-strike laws wont be possible, since getting broadband access should be a legal right.
If that's supposed to be bad, I'm jealous.
Here I get 3mb cable with a 20gb monthly cap for $70 per month, and it's the fastest and highest value I can get for straight internet.
I could get 10mb with no cap from the same company for about $80 per month, but I would also have to buy a cable and phone service package. The total would be around $200 or so per month.
You've got it easy in NYC, and I know there are still some places in my state where you can't get better than dialup speeds, and if you can they are outrageous.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Once you've found the time to RTFA you might also want to read up on the differences between legal rights and natural rights. Also might want to throw social rights in there as well, if you believe in those sorts of things.
It really is good to know from where your various rights descend.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Seems slashdot didn't like nordic characters - proper link
(My) first post, from Finland. It doesn't seem that this connection is supposed to be FREE - just that some companies are obliged to provide such connections (at least 1 mbps, the local definition of "broadband") throughout the country. In other words, you would still have to pay for it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any mention of there being no charge.
So this new right is just yet another form of redistribution of the fruits of productive labor, and more Nanny Statism. Of course. And when you make getting the use of a dermatologist or an allergist a "right," this is exactly the sort of thing that comes next.
Here in Europe we like that kind of thing, YMMV.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
That might be soon enough. Seems global warming is doing it's job, as last winter and a few before that there was maybe couple of weeks with snow - long gone are the >-20c winter days.
I'm not going to try reading Finnish, but I'm guessing this is like many other regulations that granted monopolies have to deal with in European countries. For example here in Norway to get digital TV broadcast rights they had to increase coverage to almost everyone, even if you decided to hide between two mountains. You don't pay the full cost of delivering electricity and phone lines to a remotely located home. Same with mobile broadband, to get the 3G license they had to commit to offering to some areas that couldn't get broadband, I know because it happened near a relative's cabin - there's a few residential houses there and they were setting up mobile broadband for regulation compliance, no way in hell that was profitable.
I know most Americans get mental anguish just thinking about it, but it's not so bad as it sounds. The businesses usually has some form of compensation agreement, or consider it part of paying the license fee except in labor not cash. It's basically the state subsidizing private build-out to areas that otherwise wouldn't get served. Of course that's a redistribution issue, but then you have to look at it along with every other tax, some hitting rural areas more than urban areas and vice versa. The whole angle of considering this some sort of legal right is a bit fishy though, yeah it's an economic requirement to provide service but there's still lots of reasons they can kick you off like non-payment, violating the terms of service or whatever. But it's still a pretty big step.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"about 2,000 (households) in far-flung corners of the country" wouldn't be included.
What good is the right to a broadband connection if they don't have the right to an unfiltered connection? In case you didn't know, a filter maintained by Finnish police that's supposed to block child pornography also blocks other content, including a website critical of Finland's internet filter:
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I would like correct some misunderstandings that several readers seem to have after reading the article title. This does NOT mean that every Finn will be getting a government-financed 1Mbit broadband starting next July (doh..) but rather it's something of an obligation to the government imposed by itself on itself, to provide every single address in Finland (including the extremely rural Northern villages in Lapland) with the readiness to start using a moderate broadband connection by next July. The customers will definitely still have to pay their TelCo of choice a monthly fee for providing the actual service (actually, I personaly just renewed my contract with the Telco for 24 months - I guess they would have said if broadband was going to be a free commodity by next year :).
The assumed logic behind this is, that as more and more of government functions and media are moving from physical media to the Internet, the technical readiness to access the Internet from one's home should be a civil right, just like running water, a telephone line and snail mail delivery. After this, the government can start moving more of its stuff to the Internet (e.g. some tax-money financed television content produced by the national broadcaster is already available only on-line), and they can rest easy that no one will file a complaint that a broadband Internet access is something of a luxury product (like it was in the early 90's), or that the government is giving priority to the South where broadband access was a few years back more abundant.
Of course, in practice 1Mb connections have been available in all urbanized and even less-urbanized areas for several years. I think this law will simply mean that the government will pay the TelCos some subsidies to build the last-mile cable even in the far, rural North, and in the very few Southern villages that are still without 1Mb broadband cables.
I... think this was answered in the article? The giant companies with state-granted monopolies and huge profits which they extract from certain markets are being told that in order for the gravy train to continue that they'll have to give something back to the community.
How was this not clear to you?
America is the only 1st World country where filing for bankruptcies for unpaid medical expenses exists.
Canada, they of the Great-White-Northern single payer system, has a substantial medical bankruptcy rate. It's less prevalent in Europe (though it still exists there too) but only because they have an even bigger social welfare state.
The majority of medical bankruptcies come not from lack of insurance, but from long illnesses that result in lack of income.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The filter isn't mandatory and as such not all ISPs use it(not that it makes it much better). For example my ISP(Saunalahti) doesn't use it. Though they often operate in Elisas network which does use the list so if your connection makes use of Elisas name servers you'll be on an filtered connection. To the credit of Saunalahti, all it took was one e-mail to them and I had instructions to use their name servers to avoid the filtering.
Well, Finland has lower population-density than USA does. So while Finland might be smaller, there are more paying customers in USA. There are other factors to consider besides the size of the country. How about the resources available? If USA had similar amount of resources (money, manpower etc.) available than FInland does, then it might make sense to compare the sizes of the country).
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Hi, I'm from Finland. I have 100/10 Mb/s for 20 Euros a month.
Or, you can turn your life over to a government with the promises of all your needs being taken care of from cradle to grave. All you have to give them is... everything.
"Everything"? I live in Finland, were we are apparently taken care of by the state from cradle to grave. Have we given "everything" to the state? No. Sure, we pay taxes (last time I checked, USA has taxes as well). But I own my home, my car, I'm free to marry whoever I want... How exactly have I given "everything" to the state?
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
It's fashionable to bash the healthcare-system. But if I feel that the public health-care does not fit my needs, I'm free to use private services.
They're starting to wonder just why it's necessary to be paying so much in taxes.
We are? In fact, several polls in Finland say that people would be willing to pay more taxes for improved public services.
They're starting to wonder why starting a business has to be a bureaucratic nightmare.
It is? There's plenty of entrepreneurs over here. My mother was one. It does't seem that starting a business is a "bureaucratic nightmare". Anyone who wants to start a business can do so.
And they're starting to vote appropriately
The right-wing parties they are voting at the moment are more or less equivalent to Democrats in USA. Some of them would be left from Democrats.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Facts please!
Urbanization:
US 82%
Finland 63%
So we're more concentrated in cities.
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People density per million square KMs
US 31 million per million square kms.
Finland 15 million per million square kms.
So there are less of them per square km!
-------
So there goes "We all live in the countryside" and "We're more spread out." Per person it's much easier to wire an American than a Fin.
I'll save the cost argument for someone else but 10x seems unlikely and the facts that were easy to check were exactly the opposite of what you claimed, so I don't have a high degree of confidence in the reliability of any claim you make.
Government doing anything in "efficient and cost effective manner"? What color is the sky on your planet?
Governemt may be the only way to organize some operations that are too costly/not profitable enough for a citizen or corporation to undertake, but unfortunately, it always causes a lot of waste and excessive cost. Bureaucratic overhead can be amazingly high and order of priorities tends to be seriously fucked.
Getting back to Finland... Nowadays the Scandinavian countries have significantly socialist tendencies. It may be shocking to you Americans but the citizens of those countries seem to be quite happy with the way the things are. And they're actually spending the tax money on something useful.
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
the US is much more regionally diverse (read 'f'ing big and spread out) compared to EU countries so it's much more challenging
I thought this canard was long buried. Here's a reminder.
The population density of Finland (15.6/sq.km) is about half that of the USA (30/sq.km) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density. The population density of Finland is lower than that in 44 of the 50 US states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density. Moreover, the population in Finland is quite dispersed, with very few large centers. Helsinki+Espoo+Vantaa combined just exceed 1 million, Tampere and Turku are each around 0.3 million when their outlying areas are included, Oulu and Jyvaskyla are each around 0.14 million, and Kuopio and Lahti are each around 0.1 million http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Finland_by_population.
I live in the countryside in Finland, about 350km north of Helsinki. I have 100/10Mbps fiber to the house, with no capacity limits. So do my "neighbours" (houses are typically separated by a few hundred meters along the road). The ISP has a monopoly, but was required by the municipality to provide a certain level of service in return for having access to its citizens and use of roads etc. to reach them. The ISP is a private company and appears to be profitable.
As far as I can see, the problems in the US are not really with population density or sparsity of population distribution. They would seem to be caused by local/state governments not balancing the interests of their citizens with the interests of ISPs. As a result, some ISPs are granted local monopolies without compensating conditions on quality of service. This allows them to avoid competition and maximize the squeeze on captive customers while providing a shoddy service by minimizing their investment in infrastructure. There are apparently some areas of the US with decent service, but in far too many places, it seems that the customers are being brutalized by the ISPs, while the authorities egg them on.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The problem, for admirers of this system such as yourself, anyway, is that Europe itself is starting to question such an arrangement. People are beginning to wonder why they can't have a good medical care system without massive government expenditures.
They do? Why haven't I seen any of these ponderings? Most comments that I see are more along the lines of "I'd rather walk on bad pavement than cut any more from social services" or perhaps (if we are talking about right-wing supporters "we demand the right to get more of our money back when using private practisioners". BTW, I'm a Finn, with lots life spent in other EU-states. Posting as Coward to keep moderation.
Considering you could drop finland into alaska and lose it, it would be much larger task to develop that kind of infrastructure in the USA. Not gonna happen soon.
There are exactly 6 U.S. states with lower population density than Finland. Even including these large empty states, the U.S. has double the population density of Finland. The other 44 states have higher population densities than Finland, often much higher. There are also 7 states which each have more than 5 times the population density of Finland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density.
Moreover, the U.S. is 82% urbanized while Finland is only 63%, so the U.S. population is more concentrated into compact areas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Finland, Finland, Finland ...
Your mountains so lofty
For small values of "lofty". The Norwegians kindly allow us to claim the lower slopes of some of their real mountains.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Actually, Elisa dropped the filtering some time ago. Now it's available as opt in service.
If I recall correctly, only the smaller ISPs have the filtering in place.
Back to libertarianism, it suffers from the same thing: it requires people to have a work ethic and personal responsibility. Some people are like that, but some (many?) are not. They will gladly game the system.
IMHO this isn't entirely true. Libertarianism requires work ethic and personal responsibility to succeed. Those who choose not to or cannot provide for themselves will or will not survive on the voluntary charity of others.
Knowledge Brings Fear
Not sure how distance learning is typically organised in the US, but in the UK, the Open University is in the habit of physically mailing out videotapes. Actually they send DVDs now, I think, but I've got a stack of old astrophysics VHS tapes somewhere. From the comp. sci. courses I've been taking lately, heaps of CD-ROMs. I need an internet connection to submit assignments but I could easily do it over dialup. If I didn't have 20Mb cable, anyway. And they'll still take them by post if all else fails.
Back in the elder days, they used to broadcast their lectures on TV, in the small hours when regular programming was switched off; students would record them and watch them at a more reasonable hour. Many an insomniac remembers the badly dressed guy with a massive beard explaining vector calculus at three in the morning; the same goes for comatose policemen hallucinating a 1970s nightmare.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Having to manually code the euro symbol into slashdot posts is what annoys me most about posting on slashdot. Anywhere else I can simply rely on Alt Gr + 4 these days.
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They don't. All adults have the right to vote, regardless of criminal status (including people in prison at the time of the vote).