Digital infrastructure for all?

At the conference Terminsstart Telekom on Wednesday, I talked about what is required for us to achieve the broadband target of 100Mbit/s to 90% of Sweden's households and businesses by 2020. A cornerstone is constructive collaboration between different actors to achieve optimal conditions for the expansion. When all municipalities understand the importance of citizens having access to future-proof digital infrastructure - and contribute to this - much is gained.

If private operators are given the right conditions to build this essential infrastructure in all municipalities, I believe there is a good chance of achieving the 90% target. And most people now seem to agree that the target is set too low, i.e. that we cannot actually leave 10% of the population out. On the other hand, it is very unclear how these last 10% will be reached, because they are in areas where market forces are not sufficient, and I have some concerns about that.

Today, we rely heavily on village associations and local enthusiasts to manage this, and in many places this is an excellent solution. But how do we ensure that village infrastructure is future-proof and of the right quality? How do we deal with villages where there are no enthusiasts willing to run infrastructure projects? And who will finance the expansion?

On Wednesday, I had high hopes of receiving answers to these questions from the Social Democrats' IT policy spokesperson Monica Green. Unfortunately, it seems that eight years in opposition has not been enough time to formulate answers to these questions.

Monica Green did talk about the importance of everyone being involved and that the Social Democrats can imagine tax financing for the last 10 percent in some way, but we did not get an answer to how this will happen. Most people can probably agree with the messages in the blog post Monica Green wrote the same day, but I lack concrete ideas and proposals on how we will achieve a digitized Sweden and how the new government intends to ensure that everyone is connected to the digital infrastructure.

Being able to connect to a future-proof digital infrastructure is a matter of democracy and is therefore ultimately up to the government. I hope we will soon get a clear answer on how the new government plans to take responsibility for the digitalization of Sweden.