Finland scored the highest points in the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and became the digital leader among the EU Member States in 2019. One of the strongest dimensions of the Finnish performance was digital public services, which are actively used by more than nine in ten internet users. Every second Finn is also using public health and care services over the internet, which is the highest number in the EU.
Perhaps paradoxically considering the investments made in digital public services, the weakest dimension of the Finnish performance is connectivity. This is largely because of lack of fixed broadband connections and excessive use of mobile networks, which results in slower and less reliable connections. We argue that extensive digitalisation of public services together with long-standing government policies favouring mobile broadband have created a new kind of inequality among the Finnish citizens as the users of the digital public services.
More than 90 percent of all Finnish households are using mobile broadband and over 40 percent of them are totally dependent on it as the only internet connection. About 25 percent of the households do not have much choice, as they do not have even available any fixed internet connections, which would meet the EU definition of fast broadband (over 30 Mbps) or the FCC definition of broadband (25 Mbps/3 Mbps). No wonder the monthly use of mobile data per subscription in Finland is currently highest in the world.
Welfare state services in Finland have been digitalised not only to improve them, but to cut down the public expenses. The current government is even planning to finance a new health care reform partly by more intensive digitalisation. So, all citizens should have equal opportunities to access and use also public social and health services online, like digital medical records and prescriptions. But if you are dependent on mobile broadband, the speed and quality of your connection fluctuates according to many variables like the number of users, distance and obstacles between the user and base station as well as to weather conditions. Mobile operators optimize their investments and do not consider all the variations in mobile broadband deployment, and thus several unwanted locations with insufficient connections exists. In 2019, on average about 30 percent of the mobile broadband users in Finland suffered from network congestion.
This multidisciplinary paper will a) study the main reasons for Finnish communication policy choices resulting in priority for mobile broadband, b) analyse the technological limitations of mobile solutions for digital public services as well as c) examine already existing and also potential juridical problems in providing an increasing amount of digital public services for citizens as consumers dependent on mobile broadband. In conclusion, we will make some suggestions for policy decisions, which would improve connectivity and usability of digital public services in Finland.