As the news breaks out, Finland has reportedly become the first country in the world to create a law guaranteeing broadband access to every Finnish citizen.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications says that starting July 2010, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection. That’s not it! By the end of 2015, the legal right will be extended to a 100 Mb broadband connection for everyone.

Finland has an estimated population of 5.4 million people and according to Wikipedia, “Around 79 percent of the population use the Internet. Finland had around 1.52 million broadband Internet connections by the end of June 2007 or around 287 per 1,000 inhabitants.”

But wait. Back in September, 2006, the Swiss Office of Communications had declared that universal access to broadband would become a legal right to every person living in Switzerland, starting January 1, 2008. So if we go by the Swiss definition of Broadband – which is 600 kbps down and 100 kbps up – and by Wikipedia’s definition of broadband – In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or greater is more concisely considered broadband Internet – Finland is not the first to introduce such a law.

So the world’s first country to make broadband a legal right is? We’ll leave that to be decided till there is an official definition of Broadband speed.

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