Estonia: Where the Internet is a Human Right

securitas writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports on technological change in Estonia, where an enlightened post-Soviet era government believes the Internet is essential for life in the 21st century and backs that up with legislation declaring Internet access is a human right. Estonia is a country where hot, running water was a luxury a decade ago. It's now a place where farmers have broadband Internet, 80% of the people use online banking, Internet usage and broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe, and the government conducts most business (meetings, votes, document reviews, etc.) virtually through a system of networked computers. Not bad for a country that only 10 years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match."

Re:The whole country, or just the Tallinn area?

[tomatensaft]

I live in Estonia, in Tallinn... :D We have some users in bigger towns and even in farms who are using good ADSL Internet access (with, say, 512 Kbit or 1 Mbit/s connection)... In smaller towns people are using shared Internet access, that means "divided Internet". In Tallinn it is almost normal to have a Cable or ADSL Internet access, because it is relativelyy cheap compared to the comfort of use. And almost 66-75% of families (mostly those with kids) have a PC at home with Internet access in Tallinn...

Re:Iraq

[KoalaBear33]

Iraq is one of the richest countries in the world so developing a high-tech infrastructure isn't difficult (Iraq is richer than practically every African, Asian, or Latin American country--excluding a few like Japan, etc). Of course, the issue will be who will want to do something like that? US-installed proxy governments won't (USA will lose control if it does)... and internal Iraqi governments won't either (hard to control people when they have access to information).

Re:Money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Estonian internet access is not goverment-funded. Also ADSL/Cable cost about as much as in western europe.

Most of the initial investments were done by scandinavian investors (Telia for example). They weren't huge -- estonia is about the size of a thumbnail on a good map... makes it easy to connect every main town with fiber.

After that, estonian telecoms have been making profit constantly.

What a pile of nonsense

[MSBob]

Since when was Estonia 'nearly bankrupt' or had hot water as a 'luxury'. Estonia has always been doing relatively well even during the years of Soviet occupation.

Just to clarify Estonia is not an 'ex-Soviet' republic. It is an independent country that was forcibly occupied by Soviets in 1940 and regained their independence in 1990. Even their language has nothing to do with Russian. It shares its roots with Swedish and Norwegian.

Re:What a pile of nonsense

[smkldr]

Estonian does not share its roots with Swedish and Norwegian. It shares its roots with Finnish and Hungarian.

Whatever they're doing, it's having a huge impact

[Distinguished Hero]

Per capita, Estonians are currently spending more time (67 hours/year/capita) [computeran...ogames.com] playing first person shooters online than Canadians (57 hours/year/capita). They're almost matching South Korea (70 hours/year/capita). By the way, the US comes in with 109 hours/year/capita.
This is quite a feat for a former Soviet republic.

Full Article [computeran...ogames.com]

Freedom of speech is more important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same Estonia which recently used KGB style scare tactics in order to prevent local peace activists from holding a demonstration in front of the US embassy? I would think freedom of speech ís somewhat more important than net access...

Re:What do you expect

[m_chan]

I couldn't decide if you were being funny, trolling, or flaming. Often, good posts are all three. Anyway, I saved my modpoints and replied to you instead.

I assume you have not read articles from The Christian Science Monitor [csmonitor.com]. I would not consider myself a religious person, let alone a Christian. However, I have found this publication to be valuable in its content, mainly because they have their own writers and do not rely as significantly upon wire services.

I pulled some info from their about [csmonitor.com] page for you and anyone else not interested in clicking through to read.

Consider this quote from _1908_ about the intent of the publication:

there was a growing need for a daily newspaper that "will place principle before dividends, and that will be fair, frank and honest with the people on all subjects and under whatever pressure" -- a truly independent voice not controlled by "commercial and political monopolists."

Here is another quote to chew on:

The Christian Science church doesn't publish news to propagate denominational doctrine; it provides news purely as a public service. Here's why: If the basic theology of that church says that what reaches and affects thought shapes experience, it follows that a newspaper would have significant impact on the lives of those who read it.

Try reading some of their articles. I think you will find it a valuable source of information, regardless of the connotation in their banner.

Re:yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did some idiot moderator mod this as off-topic? This is a story about human rights in Estonia.

A third of the Estonian population speak Russian as their native language and the Estonian government denies a passport to those who don't speak the Estonian language.

I think this shows the government's motive in this case to be publicity, rather than overwhelming love for all its citizens.

an Estonians viewpoint

[oervi]

As an Estonian it's pretty interesting for me to read about "the magical technoparadise of Estonia". While it's definitely true that internet access is extremely widespread and pretty cheap (my 512kb connection costs about 17$ per month), in most other areas Estonia is still far behind Western Europe and the US. For example, the majority of people in Tallinn live in what Americans would call "the projects" - huge concrete buildings built during the Soviet era. Also, healthcare and other public services are often on the edge of chaos (often you have to wait for over 2 months for a dentist's appointment, for example). But there is one other area in which Estonia is WAY ahead of the West and that is our women - every foreigner i've met has told me that the women in Estonia are the most beautiful in the world :)

Re:A further comment

[tuoppi]

They also have a model country - of how not to do things. Unfortunately, that is country I live in. (Finland)

For some reason, we've had bunch of politicians ruling us who a) fight political fights with each others and seem to value this more than making wise decisions for the people, b) are afraid of making other kind of decisions than restricting and limiting ones.

I somehow understand the b-part, as consequences of permitting something are much more difficult to snap back at the maker of the ruling than the permitting ones.

In Finland, we are taxed up to the point where most of the money traffic goes to the state through different kinds of taxes and state gives the living to the majority of the people. (Unemployed and otherwise unfit to work, at the moment, but there have been talks about citizenship salary..)
Terribly close to socialistic system, even on mental state, as people are already expecting for state to give them things they should have to be able to fund by themselves.

Most likely, Estonia will be rocketing past us in coming years in what comes to economy and living conditions. It is a good thing that at least someone can benefit from our stupid politicians - it is unfortunate that democracy is dictatorship of the gullible and average people, who can be pulled around like sheep on leash.

OTOH - you can't pick the country you happen to born in, and for some reason, I see alot of good things in this country. Slow slide towards socialistic system isn't one of those. Hopefully they wake up in time.

here is what turned it around for them.

[abhisarda]

Ok.

I saw a programme on DW-TV a few months ago on this subject. Why has Estonia made such progress while its neighbours are still languishing in the soviet era?

The reason of such a profound change in Estonia is because of one main reason- change of guard. Young people control the majority of Estonia's power. Be it politics, architecture, medicine..you name it. The older generation has handed over a lot of the responsibilities.

The prime minister himself is 35 years old. All the members of his cabinet are younger to him.

What is so special about young people? They carry no baggage. They want more economic progress and they will do whatever is needed to achieve that. Politicans/businesspeople/engineers work towards a common goal i.e economic progress. Nobody cares a damn about communist crap.

Here is a quote taken from (DW-TV [dw-world.de]).

YOUNG ESTONIAN LEADERS

One of Estonia's youngest politicians was asked this week to be the country's new prime minister. 35-year old, Juhan Parts - who was 24 when he started in politics - was chosen by the victorious Res Publica party after recent elections in the Baltic state. Described as 'boyish and brainy', Parts belongs to a tradition of young leaders in top positions within Estonia's government. The country's first prime minister after independence was Mart Laar who was 32 years old when sworn in.

Here is a related article about young people [youropa.dk] in Estonia.

Leaders elsewhere in the struggling economies of Europe could learn something from Estonia.

Internet prices in Estonia

[m9]

Just some statistics from someone who lives in Estonia:

Starman Cable
64/32 = 149EEK = 11$ = 10
512/128 = 295EEK = 23$ = 20
1024/320 = 495EEK = 38$ = 33

Estonian Telephone ADSL:
256/128 = 295EEK = 23$ = 20
512/256 = 495EEK = 38$ = 33

Cable is only available in the bigger cities, ASDL is available almost whereever there is a telephone line. There is no limit on how much you can download. 11$/month for an always-on connection which is faster than a dialup is quite cheap IMO.

And whereever even the telephone lines don't go, you've got GPRS which is relatively cheap compared to other countries (from ~2.5 to ~0.7 $/ per MB!)

All of my friends have internet access. Only one of them has dialup. Even my grandmother surfs on the net! My grandfather doesn't though... Some older people fear the internet.. (i'm not touching that computer, i'll brake it!), but almost everybody (at least in the cities) has used internet/computer in their lives..

marius

Re:The whole country, or just the Tallinn area?

[fazz]

as a citizen of Estonia, I can confirm that:

a) hot water was NOT a luxury 10 years ago.
b) broadband internet is NOT available for most of the territory outside major cities.
c) telephone network was in very poor condition 10 year ago, indeed. i started using FidoNet back in 1992 and it was a real mess for next few years.
today, it's much better.

for me, this is typical overdramatic artice from foreign media. ;-)

--
fazz

Re:Carefull ....

[cioxx]

Your joke isn't far off. Kazaa was written in Estonia [cnn.com].

Where do "Rights" Come From?

[fm6]

Things generally become "rights" when somebody tries to prevent you from having them. Have a look at the U.S. Bill of Rights [loc.gov]. When the U.S. was founded, every one of these rights had an active anti-constituency that would have liked to take them away. (Most of them still do.) The purpose of the BoR is to prevent this.

It's hardly suprising that as former Soviet republic would latch on to information technology as a fundamental right. It's a simple reaction to Soviet policy, which even restricted access to photocopiers. Indeed, the revolution in network and media technology played a big role in bringing down the U.S.S.R. -- much bigger than anything Ronald Reagan did. It's only natural for the Estonians to seize on this technology as a safeguard against a return to totalitarianism.

Latvians viewpoint & EU

[dimss]

Nice to meet my northern neighbours here at slashdot.

I am from Latvia. I have seen many such articles about my contry. We're behind Estonia in some areas, but not too far. I know what it's like to live in Latvia. And I know it's like to live in Estonia or Lithuania. No big difference. Therefore, all articles like this one are bullshit.

Where such articles come from? Some of our politicians want our countries to join European Union in the near future. This is why they try to present Estonia or Latvia as progressive countries with fast-growing economy and so on.

We're in doubt whether or not EU will be useful for us. EU will bring cheap workers from Asia to Latvia and Estonia. Even cheaper than we are. And no profits. At least seven years.

every foreigner i've met has told me that the women in Estonia are the most beautiful in the world :)

True. My first girl was from Estonia :) She was nice.

Re:The whole country, or just the Tallinn area?

[http404ee]

You are quite right, Tallinn is most developed, there are several parts of countries that dont differ from africa much, i find this story true, but some facts arent right, i'm 19 and 10 years i dont rember thinnking about hot water as luxury, in fact i never relaeased it was luxury before reading this article :) its just a matter of day or 2 to get broadband here, but country is small and there are only few major isps, the largest is eesti telefon with around 35 000 ADSL subsribers, its a lot for this country as there only 1500k people living here. I've finished school this year here is small history 2000 - my school got dedicated line, 128kbps 2002 - they upgraded to 8Mbps ADSL 2003 - they are digging STM1 fiber line thats quite fast i agree

Re:Not so good..

[Zurgutt]

>But I can get there cheap booze :D

You should not be surprised to meet the criminality, prostitution, drugs, mafia and general hostility of people, if you come here just for cheap booze.

How Estonia got there

[Quietti]

Disclaimer: I am not Estonian. However, I have previously worked for an Estonian company and been to Estonia and Latvia quite often and I still have many good friends there. I also speak decent Estonian, fluent Finnish and bits of Latvian and Lithuanian.

Language

Estonian is not an Indo-European language; it has very little in common with e.g. English, German, French, etc. Instead, it is a Fenno-Ugric language that is very close to Finnish and a distant cousin to Hungarian.

Meanwhile, Latvian and Lithuanian are very much Indo-Europeans and the oldest living languages of the tree. They feature words that come from as far as India's Sanscript and also have words in common with every branch of the Indo-european family. As such, they share a lot with Slavic (Russian, Polish, Czech, etc.) and Germanic (Dutch, Scandinavian) languages. While my knowledge of Latvian is extremely limitted, I find bits of German, Swedish, Russian and even French in both the vocabulary and grammar. Yet, some of the words sounds like nothing else in the other languages and would probably date back to Proto-European languages or Sanscript.

History

The Baltics have been under the domination of just about every major European power throughout history: Russia, Danemark, Sweden, Germany, Poland. As such, people's roots, particularly in Estonia, are quite diverse. As a former collegue was commenting: "What does it mean to be Estonian? Our ancestors are either Polish, Danish, Finnish, Swedish or God knows what. Few of us have actually got Fenno-Ugric blood all the way back; the only thing we have in common, is that we all speak Estonian."

The two most important phases of foreign dominations were the Hanseatic League and the Soviet Union. The first was Germany's answer to Sweden's conquest of Finland, Carelia, Ingria and Northern Russia in an attempt to control trade routes around the Baltic rim, while the later was the result of sham elections held during the Soviet force invasion near the end of the World War II.

The Soviet era forever altered the ethnic background of Estonia and especially Latvia, resulting in a large influx of Russians (plus some Ukrainians and Bielorussians) from poor rural areas being relocated there as labour force and military personel. Nowadays, Estonia's population counts about 30% of Russian-speaking former Soviet expats, while Latvia has over 40% of them. Lithuania was spared from this forced colonization, having maintained an 80% purely Lithuanian ethnic composition.

Technology in the Baltics

During the Soviet era, the three Baltic states became USSR's key engineering center. Estonia got a top-notch Cybernetics Institute that produced some of USSR's most top-secret military electronics, in the Tallinn suburb of Mustamae, while Latvia produced the railway equipement and home appliances for a large part of USSR. (I am unfortunately not familiar with what role Lithuania played - can someone fill in these blanks?)

During the Glasnost introduced by Gorbachev in the 80s, that engineering know-how started being applied to non-military needs, which produced, among other things, audiophile and video equipment such as those made by the company Estonia. Having personally heard their pristine sound, I can say that they compare extremely well to those pricey Scandinavian audiophile speakers and amplifiers. Latvia also had a similar brand, whose name I forgot, whose success was less noticable.

How Estonia became an Internet and PKI Mecca

While the Baltics had been a somewhat cozy travel destination famous for its white sandy beaches and spas (before and during the Soviet era), its infrastructure started falling appart during the Glasnost. As such, once the 3 countries regained their independance in the early 90s, rebuilding them was among the top priorities.

The phone network dated from the early part of the century and hardly reached rural areas. It was of course all analog. Scandinavian telephone compan

Belarus, Moldavia, ... prospering?

[Jadrano]

All these post-Soviet countries are prospering??

Belarus perhaps or Moldavia? Certainly not. Also the Ukraine is worse off economically than Russia.
Or did you think of the republics in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgystan, ...), most of which are totalitarian dictatorships and very far away from prospering.
The only post-Soviet countries that can perhaps be said to prosper are the three small Baltic republics. It is hardly an accident that it's just the countries that are closest (culturally) to Western Europe. So, there's not really a contrast to the "Western World", they have just joined it with quite some success. They are not that different, there is also economic hardship in the Baltic states, especially in Latvia and Lithuania, although things are improving.

Re:A further comment

[Reservoir Penguin]

As a russian citizens who has relatives leaving in estonia, Id like to comment that human rights only exist for estinians. Children anfd granfchildren of Russians who moved to the ex-soviet republic after 1940 are considred "occuopiers" and denied citizenship, work and often abolity to speak russian. Despite the fact that 40% (!) of estonian population are of russian descent , estonia is refusing to Russian and official status.

Wrong

[varjag]

About the time Estonia became a "republic".
Estonia was a very prosperous *independent* country until Stalin invaded in 1939 as part of the Non-Aggression pact with Hitler.

However, it has nothing to do with hot water shortage.

The problems with hot water begun in early 90s, when USSR imposed sancitons to Estonia shortly after its declaration of independence, barring it from energy supplies. By that time, there was *plenty* of water, power lines, railroads, highways and other relatively modern infrastructure, while your comment implies that Esti had no hot water until the very fall of the Iron Curtain.

While USSR was sufficiently lagging in some aspects of technology from the Western world, it definitely mastered the craft of warming water and delivering it to households.

Re:A further comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, most Eastern European countries are facing pretty much the same problems that you describe. Read any major newspaper from the area, you'll see articles about political corruption scandals, crime, poverty, lawyers, and all the other plagues that afflict modern civilization.

The important distinction is that for those countries, this is a BIG step up, considering their condition just 15 or 20 years ago. Just the fact that there's an independent media would have been unthinkable back then.

Russian rhetoric on human rights

[martrootamm]

Russian language is not supposed to be an official state language, as it has already been a tool of russification. Estonian language is the official state language of Estonia, as is the case in Latvia and Lietuva (Lithuania), with their own national/native languages, respectively.

The stringency of these laws is possibly a logical backlash at russification, which we have had to endure for half a century.

Everyone is not required to pass tests on national language, nor is it IMO forced on other people to speak it (like do or die). There are non-Estonians who don't even bother to learn the language, even if they had an ideal age to do it.

The 'overnight' argument may seem quite rash, but it is the requirement in some jobs to speak Estonian at least in a minimally satisfactory manner, to ensure that the person can interact with other Estonians, some of whom only speak his/her native language.

Some jobs and positions do require the full ability to speak Estonian, and some require that a person be an Estonian citizen (members of parliament and the government, for example).

As it is, if you were to go to live and work in Sweden, the laws of that country would require you to speak Danish. If it's not exactly the laws, then interaction with local officials requires that you speak the language, as it is the official language there.

I suggest you see the film "Interdevochka" ("Intergirl"), where in one scene the main character is told by an official in Sweden that if she wants to get a decent job, she has to go through local high education and fluently speak Swedish.

---
These supposed WWII veterans who "fought Nazis" also deported thousands of people from Baltic countries to Siberia, just because they were better well off. Many of the deported died en route, many perished in harsh conditions and many never came back.

Germany has a shameful Nazi past. The Baltic states just don't have this much a shameful past, although some groups of like-minded people like sticking it to the country.

Either way we were caught in a crossfire between the Soviets and Nazis, as during Nazi rule the conscription took the young to that side and during Soviet rule the conscription took the young to their side; in both cases forcefully and both occupied the three countries.