The Finnish government has become the first in the world to make broadband internet access a legal right.

According to local reports, the Ministry of Transport and Communications in Helsinki has pushed through a law that will force telecommunications providers to offer high speed internet connections to all of the country's 5.3 million citizens.

The agreement means that by July next year, telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all Finnish residents with broadband lines that can run at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second.

Finland is already one of the world's most connected countries, with 96% of citizens online - but the communications minister, Suvi Linden, said that the mandate was necessary in order to improve the availability of internet in Finland's remote rural areas.

Bringing high speed access to all would improve the quality of life in some of the country's most sparsely-populated regions, as well as boosting business and encouraging online banking, she added.

The Finnish government committed to provide universal service last year, but this week's move is the latest part of an ambitious project to upgrade the country's broadband infrastructure.

In an announcement in September, Ms Linden committed to making 100Mb internet access - one hundred times faster than the connections mandated under the current law - available to all Finnish residents by 2015.

In Britain, efforts to make internet access more widely available are largely focused on bridging the "digital divide"; the gap between those who are regular web users and those who have never gone online.

According to the government's digital inclusion adviser, Martha Lane Fox - famous for founding travel website Lastminute.com in the 1990s - there are around 10 million Britons who have never used the web.

In an interview with the Guardian, Lane Fox said that there was an economic imperative to widening broadband access because people can use the web to save money, find new employment opportunities and give themselves other benefits.

"To an individual who's earning not very much in a year, every pound extra is extremely important, and therefore it's important that we fight for the right to get that," she said.

However, instead of mandating broadband access for all, Britain is currently considering a "three strikes" rule that would strip some people of their internet access if they are accused of illegally sharing files on the internet. Under controversial proposals backed by Lord Mandelson, those accused of infringing copyright online would have their broadband connections suspended or removed.