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Internet access is necessary for Poles?
It looks like Internet access will be treated the same way as electricity and running water, which means that every person in Poland will be entitled to have it. The new bill will oblige local authorities to provide the access to the Web.
A bill entitled Supporting Development of Services and Broadband Network Act was prepared in cooperation with Ministry of Infrastructure and Office of Electronic Communication (UKE). Its main idea is to encourage and enforce local authorities to build telecommunication networks in places, where commercial operators have no interest to do so.
“In Poland, there are still places where people do not have access to the Internet or phone. The project aims at solving the problem of these ‘white spots’ on the telecommunication map of Poland,” explains Jacek Strzalkowski, spokesman of the UKE.
Thanks to this new act, that is expected to come into force in 2010, local authorities will be able to spend money on building telecommunication networks, if residents of given place have no access or limited access to the Internet.
The project is criticized by telecommunications companies that claim that many network owners can be harmful to the service quality and that there is no need to pump public money into this sector.
