By Emmanuel Elebeke
In a first of its kind anywhere in the world and setting the standard for others to emulate, the federal republic of Finland has passed a legislation that will  make access to broadband connections to the internet a legal right for every one of its citizens.

Under the new law and effective from today, all Finland citizens  will have the right to a 1 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband connection. Telecommunications companies in the country  will be statutorily obliged to provide all citizens with broadband lines that can run at a minimum of 1Mbps.

Although geographically on the fringe of Europe, Finland the birth place of the cell phone leader Nokia has for years been at the centre of Europe’s tech industry with an established reputation of being a place where multinationals like to recruit and erect labs.

Report said from a period dating back to the 1980s, the country saw the dawning of globalization as a basis to carve out a high-end niche in the industry.

Suvi Linden, the country’s communications minister, said the internet was part of everyday life for Finnish people and that high speed internet access was a priority for the government.

‘Finland has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not everyone had access,’ she said.

According to the report, up to 96 per cent of the population of the country  is already online and only about 4,000 homes will need to be connected to comply with the law.

With this development, the government has promised that by 2015, the entire population will have a 100Mbps connection.