SPEED appears to be something of an obsession in Finland. The country has produced more than its fair share of very talented (and very quick) rally and racing champions.

Any self-respecting Finnish road user seems able to cope with the sort of extreme winter conditions that caused such havoc here as if they, too, were champions.

But it’s speed of a different kind that has been making the headlines in Helsinki.

Late last year, the Finnish Government declared that access to a super-fast broadband connection was a human right. To make its point, it also declared that everyone in the country must have a connection with a minimum speed of one megabyte by this summer.

Now, the Finns have gone a stage further by confirming that by 2015 every household must be within two kilometres of a fibre optic cable supplying superfast broadband running at 100 megabytes per second.

It is, to say the least, an ambitious undertaking.

If it is delivered – and few with knowledge of all things Finnish doubt it will be – it is going to give the country and its people enormous advantages.

The Finnish government believes fast connections will not only transform the way the country does business, but also the way its residents access key services including healthcare.

Larger countries may share the Finns’ ambition, but find themselves constrained by geography and population.

Finland, after all, covers an area the size of Britain and Ireland combined, but has a population of just 5.3m. That makes the challenge facing its telecommunications industry more manageable.

But, even allowing for that, the vision and determination displayed by Finland should serve as a lesson to other governments – including ours.

UK policy on superfast broadband remains hazy.

The Digital Britain report set a target of universal internet access of speeds of at least two megabytes per second by 2012.

That year London will be hosting the Olympic Games, and the service provider on whose shoulders much of our digital network rests is BT – already contracted as a major sponsor and partner to the games.

Fast connections will doubtless be plentiful across the vast swathes of regenerated land in London’s East End, where the games will take place.

Rural Britain, unlike rural Finland, may have to wait.

MATT JOHNSON is chairman of Mando Group.