I spotted this variant on ‘necessity being the mother of invention’ at just over latitude 65° North.   Not far distant from the Arctic Circle and, at minus 35°C, it was a place where waiting around outside to see the Northern Lights was nowhere near as good an idea as getting back inside the hotel to share the comfort of a Cognac.

Not seeing the Northern Lights was the only real disappointment of an expedition to discover just exactly why Sweden heads the league table of European countries with advanced broadband access – a country where the most bandwidth-hungry citizens regard symmetric Internet access at 100Mb/s as ‘so last generation’.

The Swedish national policy target of 95% penetration of 100Mb/s network access by 2020 seems likely to be easily attainable – whereas other countries (like India, Brazil or the UK) may only dream of achieving 20% FTTH coverage by sometime in the decade after.

Sweden is very easy visiting for language-challenged Brits like myself. Even in brochures written entirely in Swedish they have an endearing habit of adopting English tag lines for their projects. The extra-ordinary northern network managed by IT Norrbotten declared its mission as ‘We make progress possible’.

The Swedish winter has this year been even longer and harder than usual – so much so that it has been compared to their drawn-out and rigorous process for selecting Sweden’s entry to the 2011 Eurovision song contest!  But the priority given to ‘making progress possible’ is understandable in a place where any construction work can only happen in the six warmer months.

With vast distances between isolated settlements, with the need to grow local employment and be relatively self-sufficient, with the requirement to provide a first-class education for children and an enviable health service, the challenges of ‘making progress possible’ demands what others might regard as heroic responses.

These difficult local conditions go a long way to explaining why they’ve got their networking act together.  But it is much more than a simple matter of survival. The access networks and their interconnectivity with all aspects of life are understood not simply as enabling economic growth but also binding communities together.

Perhaps no picture makes this clearer than the fibre network plug-in point in the car park for the mobile mammography truck – instant analysis and, if required, remote but immediate specialist consultation saving the logistics of yet another long ice-bound journey.

Returning from Sweden to the UK I could write at length on the many fascinating facets of fibre access networks in a place where the extremes of temperature and distances make everyday life a huge challenge.  But for those who might complain that the benefits of advanced open network access are not yet apparent in the UK the answer must surely reflect our collective inability to want them badly enough.

Getting the UK out of the slow lane is not just a matter of satisfying fibre speed freaks. Investing in next generation access networks is not simply about finding a commercial model that feeds the fortunes of financiers.

Without demands for localised management, without an insistence on adaptation to the needs of local communities, without welding together public and private needs and without a real determination to set challenging national standards, the underlying infrastructure investment rationale for ‘making progress possible’ will never be grasped.

Turn the cover of the IT Norrbotten brochure and the first page headline says it all.

“Idéer som överbrygger avstånd föds där de behöves som mest.”

Ideas are born where they are needed most.

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Notes:

The Groupe Intellex - CST visit to Sweden included rural and urban open access networks across the country.  

IT Norrbotten is based in the northernmost region at Lulea - an area not dissimilar to northern Scotland - but in February very much colder!   

The visit was made possible through the generous cooperation of the regional and local networks (Sundybergs Stadsnat, IT Norrbotten, Lunet and Utsikt) and their customers and NETadmin Systems.

The visit was a pathfinder trip to explore the practicality of Community Study Tours for UK communities wishing to benefit from the experience of local network operations that are between 5-10 years ahead of current UK practice.

see also Community Study Tours and a short video of the recent CST 'pathfinder' planning trip to Sweden