Starting today, every citizen of Finland has the legal right to a broadband internet connection with speeds of at least one megabit per second. That’s not to say that the internet service will be provided for free, just that it must be made available to every home.
According to the BBC, “It is believed up to 96% of the population are already online and that only about 4,000 homes still need connecting to comply with the law.” Finland has also promised to bump everyone up to minimum 100Mbps connections by the year 2015, as well.
There’s apparently some concern that illegal file sharing activities over government-mandated broadband lines may have the potential to cause some political uneasiness, but Finland’s communication minister Suvi Linden told the BBC, “We will have a policy where operators will send letters to illegal file-sharers but we are not planning on cutting off access.”
Letters? If only there was a way to send letters electronically over the internet to people using the internet to share files illegally. They could call it “electronic mail” or something similar. I don’t know. I’m not a marketing guy.
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