> Internet access (and not just HTTP) in Finland (?) is free.
Internet access in Finland is not free. However, everybody in Finland is entitled to Internet service, i.e. each area has a designated universal service provider who is responsible for providing a minimum of 1 Mbps service to everyone in the area.
So, if you want Internet service in Finland, you can always get it. It does not mean it's free, just that it's always available.
Prices for wired service are reasonable, between 30 and 50 euros (average prices for 1M and 100M respectively). Wireless service is cheap and coverage is very good with close to universal coverage. 50M uncapped and unlimited LTE is 15 to 20 euros per month. Prepaid LTE is 20 euros for 10G or 20 euros for unlimited and uncapped service at a low speed for six months.
That's ridiculously good. I'm paying $120AUD/month for 100 megabit down / 40 up. It's far better than the 8/1 I had before but I can exceed the monthly traffic quota in 45 minutes or less!
What's the speed like going out of the country? Where are the big peering points?
The main local IX is FICIX. The main Swedish IX Netnod in Stockholm is 8 ms away. Netnod is the 10th largest IX in the world. A new direct subsea cable to Germany just got built and it will bring DE-CIX, the largest IX In the world closer.
Russia is also close. Google and Yandex both built datacenters in Finland to serve Russia and Northern Europe. Facebook put theirs in Sweden for the same reason.
There's been a lot written on peering. Dr. Peering has a lot on his website, perhaps not so much regarding latency but lots and lots on peering in general. Googling for publications will also get you a lot of interesting stuff.
That's because Finland's low-density areas are cold whereas Australia's are hot, and hot bits are vastly more expensive to transmit. It can't possibly be that one country's SPs were more effective at buying politicians. Because lobbying (i.e. legal cover for bribery) would never cause that to happen.
I almost choked on my coffee before I understood this was written in jest :) Well done!
More seriously one historic contributing factor was probably that Finland had small, local monopolies that provided services locally and each had both local owners and local pride. There wasn't just one large state monopoly as in most other countries. Later competition blossomed quite well once the monopolies were removed.
Depends on the provider. 100/10M is a common product, but some offer 100/100M.
EDIT:
Half of the dwellings have cable where you can get 350/20M for 45 euros per month.
Fiber/FTTB is all over the map, but typical max speed from a large telco is 1000/100M for 52,50 euros per month.
Internet access in Finland is not free. However, everybody in Finland is entitled to Internet service, i.e. each area has a designated universal service provider who is responsible for providing a minimum of 1 Mbps service to everyone in the area.
So, if you want Internet service in Finland, you can always get it. It does not mean it's free, just that it's always available.
Prices for wired service are reasonable, between 30 and 50 euros (average prices for 1M and 100M respectively). Wireless service is cheap and coverage is very good with close to universal coverage. 50M uncapped and unlimited LTE is 15 to 20 euros per month. Prepaid LTE is 20 euros for 10G or 20 euros for unlimited and uncapped service at a low speed for six months.