Waiting for high-speed internet: how much longer?
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Audit Manager, National Audit Office
Although bringing high-speed internet to every person in Estonia has been on national plans for two decades already, Estonia is moving towards its goal slowly, constantly pushing deadlines further into the future.
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, as of autumn 2024, there are still at least 120,000 addresses in market failure regions, or the so-called ‘white areas’, where high-speed internet connections should be built, but there is no sign of an operational solution to this problem.
At the current rate, high-speed internet will reach all those who need it in market failure regions by 2050, or nearly a third of a century later than was planned at the beginning.
In order to bring the internet connection at the promised level to the people of Estonia, it is necessary to significantly increase funding and to accelerate the pace of construction, as well as get a much clearer picture of which addresses would benefit from building high-speed internet connections and which not, who is waiting for high-speed connections, and how to regulate the management of the networks.