An interesting approach -- from Google/AFP:
As world first, Finland makes broadband service basic right
Finland on Thursday became the first country in the world to make access to a broadband service a basic right, ensuring that a high-speed Internet connection is available to all Finns, a government official said.
"Today the universal service obligation concerning Internet access of one Megabit per second (Mbit/s) has entered into force," Olli-Pekka Rantala of the communications networks unit at the ministry of transport and communications said.
"It is our understanding that we have become the first in the world to have made broadband a basic right," he added.
The tech-savvy Nordic country amended its communications market act last year to make sufficient Internet access a universal service, such as the telephone and postal services.
It was later determined by the ministry of communications "that what is meant by sufficient Internet access ... is one Megabit per second." Rantala said.
Finnish Communications Minister Suvi Linden called the new mandatory broadband regulation "one of the government's most significant achievements in regional policy."
"I'm proud of it," she said in a statement. "I hope that people will make use of the opportunity and turn to telecom operators in the area they live."
From July 1, service providers in Finland are thus obligated to provide a one Mbit/s connection to all Finnish households, regardless of their location.
On the one hand, I laud the decision to do this -- there are a lot of remote villages and to guarantee 1Mb/s to each household is some serious bandwidth. On the other hand, it opens up the question of what a person's rights really are -- does a person have a government-given right to free schooling, to health care, to a job, to an automobile, to government food, to government provided shelter?
Where do you start and where do you stop and who pays for it all. Tax the rich for sure but they are not stupid and will find shelters and even relocate so the overall revenues will plummet. This has happened here and in other nations on a sickeningly repeating basis. And you still have a percentage of the population demanding their slice of the free Government Cheese. But then again, I'm just a private sector kinda guy...
