Now that the Finns have a legal right to broadband access....

telecomm providers are obliged to offer always on high speed
internet connections to all of the country's 5.3 million citizens...

with a minimum speed of at least 1 megabit per second.

The contrast between Finland and the UK could not be more stark.

Finland is treating broadband as being essential to its infrastructure.

Finland is already one of the world's most connected countries with
96% of citizens online.

communications minister... Suvi Linden... said that the mandate was
necessary in order to improve the availability of internet in Finland's
remote rural areas.

committed to making 100Mb internet access.... one hundred times
faster than the connections mandated under the current law ....

available to all Finnish residents by 2015.



In the UK... the government is aiming at 2Mbps for 99% of the population

by 2012 ... but there's no law to back it.

We are now ranked 33rd in the world when it comes to broadband speed...

with an average that is nearly five times slower than South Korea.

In this day and age Britain could quite easily have the best superfast broadband

network in Europe.

I think that the UK is severely lagging behind over the speed of broadband services.



As for businesses in Britain...

the speed of the internet must have a huge affect.

If you spend your day on the internet...

looking into research for example...

slow internet speed must hold you back in your work while you have to wait for a

page to load.



How many times have you given up on a site because it's taking too long to load?...

and the price we have to pay in britain for the service is nothing short of robbery

with a max of 50 mb. at 50 pounds for the privilege.

I suppose One thing that must be considered is that the UK's internet network and

broadband cables were installed long before those in places such as Romania or

Latvia for example ....

where services are quite new.

The task of ripping up the existing network of cables must be a daunting one....

and extremely expensive....



but I'm quite sure Mr Internet will foot the bill.

Its easier in countries with small population like Finland and Sweden to expand the infrastructure, but it is also driven by our telecom companies like Nokia, Ericsson, Telia, Tele2.

"I pity the ones without 100Mb fibre"

you have to remember that the uk has a population of around 70 million people,13 million just in london,no way will you have fibre run into every household.bt have started to run fibre into all new developments and are currently undertaking next generation netwoking,but this will only guarentee around 20mbs at most,in order to get more you need fibre run from exchange to house.most service providers at the moment only guarentee bb speeds up to the cabs (those green boxes you see in the roads) from there you hit copper which carries the adsl into your home,to undertake the huge task of replacing the present infrastucture and run fibre to every household,is going to take years and vast amounts of money/investment.

It looks like Virgin are testing a 200mb connection http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/06/virgin-media-testing-docsis-3-0-to-new-limits-with-200mbps-3d-a/

Virgin is fiber to the local street cab, then high quality coaxial cable for the last few 100 feet or so to the house, via docsis 3.0.

Quote:

we are on track to launch a 100Mb cable service in the fourth quarter. In addition, we continue to trial 200Mb downstream and 20Mb upstream speeds on our cable platform.

im tempted to get the full hd movies and sports now there available on virgin

still though havent bothered on upgrading from 20mb broadband as i dont really get any problems

Always knew you Brits were backward

We have fiber up to the house, then coax internally. Getting 15Mb up / 25Mb down.

On a more serious note, the US does have good bandwidth available to some areas, but fact is we also have a lot of outdated infrastructure (power distribution, bridges and other stuff).

I'm lucky internet-wise, but like Jon said, it's going to take a lot of time and money, and internet is not our only problem.

In Sweden we talk about 1000/100 now......