Estonia’s development vision of next generation broadband sets the goal to have all homes, institutions and businesses are connected to broadband by 2015. The EstWin2 project will be launched in the regions where there is no access to the connection and it is not developed by the telecommunication companies either. The aim of the project is to develop access networks by 2015. The study shows in which areas there is no access to the internet and why the access has not been developed.

„There is no access to fast internet in 70 municipalities of Estonia. In total, 650,000 residents do not have the access to high-speed internet.“ – Mari Rell

  • More than half of the population (55%) does not have the access to fast internet (40 Mbit/s).
  • 8% of all buildings have connection which allows faster internet than 40 Mbit/s.
  • All mobile operators have promised to construct their 4G networks and to provide high-speed mobile internet across Estonia by 2017.
  • 70 municipalities are without fast internet. They have a total population of 92,000. Most of those municipalities are in Saare County, Tartu County, Pärnu County and Ida-Viru County.
  • 85% of the population of the complete market failure regions is able to use slow internet connection.
  • It is estimated that without the intervention, 160,000 to 180,000 residential or summer houses will remain without fast internet connection by the year 2017.

The recommendations for policy makers and communication provides were also formulated in order to help implementing the development vision of broadband by the year 2017:

  • Analysing the solutions and mitigations of market failures.
  • Ensuring equal development of the availability of high-speed internet in both densely and sparsely populated areas.
  • Finishing the EstWin1 project according to the plan and launching the EstWin2 project.
  • Houses should be connected to the fixed access.

See also

Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunication