The annual survey by the universities of Oxford and Oviedo, sponsored by Cisco Systems, does not give a rosy picture of the mobile broadband made available by service providers in Finland. Researchers, using data from 40 million real broadband quality tests, placed Finland far down on the list from top broadband countries.
"It is difficult to say why. Maybe investments into mobile broadband and faster speeds have been delayed or late," says Esa Korvenmaa, CEO of Cisco Systems Finland, a supplier of networking equipment to service providers.
New technology needed
Jukka-Pekka Juutinen, a communications market specialist at the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority, also points out that the equipment has not been deployed that would ensure quality mobile broadband.
"The most important factor is the technology," says Juutinen.
According to Juutinen, new data transfer capacity is needed in order to provide both faster and better quality mobile broadband services.
Finland did rise in the survey of fixed broadband quality ranking from 15th to 6th place worldwide. On the other hand, the difference in broadband quality between urban and rural areas in Finland was found to be the third highest among the more than 70 countries surveyed. Service providers and the state have both recently pledged improvements in reasonably priced connections for more remote areas.
"These projects are sure to be challenging, but I see no reason that they cannot be met. This will certainly require cooperation among state officials, local administrations and service providers," notes Jukka-Pekka Juutinen.
Seventy percent of all households in Finland have broadband connections, placing Finland 25th in the world in terms of broadband penetration.
