I had the privilege of meeting the Swedish Infrastructure minister, Åsa Torstensson, at a breakfast for people who were speaking at Internetdagarna yesterday. I heard her outline what Sweden was doing with broadband access and in my very broken understanding of Swedish one thing really stood out.

90% of households should have 100 Mbps by 2020

Which strikes me as a good and lofty goal. They want to have 40% coverage at this speed by 2015 too. Interestingly when I spoke to her there was no mention about digital media and giving everyone access to TV on demand services or downloading content, it was about access to services. Services such as education, eHealth, eGovernment, big picture things. In a report on the announcement she mentions that the trend in internet useage is towards two-way communication. The report also mentions increased consumption of online media and entertainment.

There was one phrase which I loved which came through in my short discussion with her and the report, which is that it is a democracy and freedom of speech issue. They talk about universal access being important for achieving political goals in entrepreneurship, environment, education and health.

What strikes me about this is that when the internet and access to data and services becomes not just a commercial service, but an integral part of your life as a citizen it becomes a human right. Åsa used the words democracy and freedom of speech and it makes me wonder how legal it would be to restrict someone’s democracy and freedom of speech on the fairly minor charge of filesharing.