Lofty ambitions need feet on the ground

OPINION: Finland has received numerous accolades for declaring access to 1 megabit-per-second broadband would become a "legal right" in July, including from Labour communications spokeswoman Clare Curran.

She notes its relevance to the debate on appropriate sanctions for copyright infringers.

Last year, Finland also declared 100Mb broadband would be a legal right by 2015, though according to The Helsinki Times there was some small print.

The commitment was that no households, other than 2000 in far flung areas, should be more than 2km from a connection – not that every home be wired with fibre.

In New Zealand, people who do subscribe to broadband get average speeds of 5Mbps and the Government's urban and rural broadband plans are intended to bring fibre to within 2km of all but a small percentage of households by about the same date.

Finland has probably earned the right to voice lofty aspirations as it sits fifth in the OECD table for broadband take-up at present. But posturing isn't everything.

The Government could legislate that everyone have a right to good health and a happy family life by 2015.

Finland's statement took me back to a conversation I had with Bob Sparks, a one-time world record-holding hot air-balloon pilot and New York night club owner, in his apartment in the Hungarian city of Pecs in 1993.

Mr Sparks had set up a hot air-balloon factory near the city, and we briefly touched on his plans for a new ultralight airship he hoped to develop. He clammed up, though, explaining that in his experience talk tended to dissipate action.

Coming from Mr Sparks, an archetypal man of action, that had some resonance.

He traversed Pecs in a stretch limousine and flew balloons over war-torn Yugoslavia. I knew him through a mutual acquaintance at the Russian embassy – he had been trying to source silk from army parachutes for his factory with the assistance of a diplomat I'd once supplied with a sample Scottish pound note.

While Finland's vision drew international headlines, the New Zealand government has made some useful head-down progress setting out its approach to how councils and utilities might be gently goaded to share infrastructure, to aid its broadband initiative.

The nitty-gritty stuff the Economic Development Ministry is dealing with, such as how to improve the standard of internal wiring in homes, is not glitzy, but key to real longterm progress.

And it's "back to the grindstone" if a monster 238-page report released last week by the OECD is to be believed. It ranked New Zealand 23rd out 30 for broadband speed, penetration and price.