In a breakthrough report to the17th session of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue from Guatemala called for governments of the world to protect citizens’ access to the internet as a key tool for enabling their human rights.

If internet speech is a human right, then we must concern ourselves with internet access as much as we do about government filtering and control. Nations like Finland were some of the first to guarantee broadband internet to its peoples, but now the UK, Australia, and others are moving to do the same. According to Net Index, South Korea, and parts of Europe lead the pack in average internet speeds. The top ten nations zip along at 23 Mbps or more but the vast majority of the world is well below 1 Mbps. The truth is that it’s going to take major investments in infrastructure to give the world’s citizens high speed access.