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Estonia has impressed me with their forward thinking policies. Everything about their execution of this plan has me impressed. They have executed well in financ

by saym 14y ago

Estonia has impressed me with their forward thinking policies. Everything about their execution of this plan has me impressed. They have executed well in financing the building of this network and in creating a sustainable business model for the future. Related note: 5 Months ago I remember hearing about their plan to introduce programming into elementary curriculum. http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/09/04/2136256/estonia-to-teach-programming-in-schools-from-age-6 http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/09/04/2136256/estoni...

jkaljundi 14y ago
On the related note: Wolfram announced a few days ago Estonia becoming their first CBM country for computerbasedmath.org to rewrite key years of school probability and statistics from scratch: http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/02/11/announcement-our-first-cbm-country/ http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/02/11/announcement-our-first-cb...
walshemj 14y ago
Estonia is a former Soviet republic and now a fairly poor European country one does have to ask is there not better things to spend this on? Support for start ups that create long term jobs and values might be a better use of the carbon credits they sold to Mitsubishi.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Off Wikipedia: "Estonia has the highest gross domestic product per person among the former Soviet republics.[10] It is listed as a "high-income economy" by the World Bank, is identified as an "advanced economy" by the International Monetary Fund, and is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The United Nations classifies Estonia as a developed country with a very high Human Development Index,[5] and the country ranks highly in measures of press freedom (3rd in the World in 2012[11]), economic freedom, political freedom and education."
  - walshemj 14y ago
    Then why are there tons of educated Estonians moving to the UK doing the low level jobs then. And first amongst former soviet states is not exactly knocking it out of the ball park.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      > Then why are there tons of educated Estonians moving to the UK doing the low level jobs then. Better weather? > And first amongst former soviet states is not exactly knocking it out of the ball park. Clearly, they should be ZEROTH.
      - walshemj 14y ago
        well compared to Seattle anywheres weather is better :-)
    - jkaljundi 14y ago
      Not tons, but just some. In percentage terms, there are probably proportionally the least number of Estonians who have left their country to work abroad compared to most if not all Eastern European countries.
martinced 14y ago
"They have executed well in financing the building of this network..." They have executed well in the building. Financing is kinda easy for a country of only 1.3 million people heavily subsidized by the European Union (which Estonia is a part of). During the 2008-2009 crisis (which is not done yet but I digress), the Estonian GDP took a gigantic hit: -20% of the GDP. That's what you get when you're taxing the private sector like crazy: the private sector, in usual circumstances, can barely survive. If any crisis happens, then the private sector dies and the economy crumbles (thank you socialism for the crazy high confiscatory tax rates on the private sector). It's like Poland, for example: I love this country and it feels incredibly more "new" and even sometimes more "hi-tech" (e.g. in big cities malls) than western europe... But Poland is receiving crazy funding from the EU to get up to speed. As an EU taxpayer, that said, it's good that at least some of money is used to invest in technologies that are bound to become very important in the future...
- jmspring 14y ago
  Agree with your point about both the size of the country and the funding they are receiving. That said, when I visited Estonia in the early 2000s, prior to being in the EU, their broadband infrastructure seemed better than that of Finland and Germany (two countries I spent time in). That may have well been due to it's overall size. What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the tech sector there. The biggest tech employers seem to be the government, the banks, and Skype. Maybe Skype buyout V2 will inject more in the way of a startup culture there.
  - yen223 14y ago
    "What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the tech sector there. The biggest tech employers seem to be the government, the banks, and Skype." I believe that's not unique to Estonia. The biggest tech employers in my country are the government and the banks as well (No Skype here).
  - jkaljundi 14y ago
    Estonia has ~15000 people working in the tech sector. There are 1500 tech/IT companies, 26 of them above 100 employees. IT/Tech is ~5.8% of GDP (2010). Here is one Estonian Startups list: http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups - all in all, there are 100+ active startups in Estonia, which I would say for a country of 1 million people is quite a startup culture. Estonia now has I believe 7 or 8 European startup accelerator Seedcamp winners, trailing only UK, Seedcamp's home country.

by saym 14y ago

jkaljundi 14y ago

On the related note: Wolfram announced a few days ago Estonia becoming their first CBM country for computerbasedmath.org to rewrite key years of school probability and statistics from scratch: http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/02/11/announcement-our-first-cbm-country/ http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/02/11/announcement-our-first-cb...

walshemj 14y ago

Estonia is a former Soviet republic and now a fairly poor European country one does have to ask is there not better things to spend this on? Support for start ups that create long term jobs and values might be a better use of the carbon credits they sold to Mitsubishi.

saraid216 14y ago
Off Wikipedia: "Estonia has the highest gross domestic product per person among the former Soviet republics.[10] It is listed as a "high-income economy" by the World Bank, is identified as an "advanced economy" by the International Monetary Fund, and is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The United Nations classifies Estonia as a developed country with a very high Human Development Index,[5] and the country ranks highly in measures of press freedom (3rd in the World in 2012[11]), economic freedom, political freedom and education."
- walshemj 14y ago
  Then why are there tons of educated Estonians moving to the UK doing the low level jobs then. And first amongst former soviet states is not exactly knocking it out of the ball park.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    > Then why are there tons of educated Estonians moving to the UK doing the low level jobs then. Better weather? > And first amongst former soviet states is not exactly knocking it out of the ball park. Clearly, they should be ZEROTH.
    - walshemj 14y ago
      well compared to Seattle anywheres weather is better :-)
  - jkaljundi 14y ago
    Not tons, but just some. In percentage terms, there are probably proportionally the least number of Estonians who have left their country to work abroad compared to most if not all Eastern European countries.

martinced 14y ago

"They have executed well in financing the building of this network..." They have executed well in the building. Financing is kinda easy for a country of only 1.3 million people heavily subsidized by the European Union (which Estonia is a part of). During the 2008-2009 crisis (which is not done yet but I digress), the Estonian GDP took a gigantic hit: -20% of the GDP. That's what you get when you're taxing the private sector like crazy: the private sector, in usual circumstances, can barely survive. If any crisis happens, then the private sector dies and the economy crumbles (thank you socialism for the crazy high confiscatory tax rates on the private sector). It's like Poland, for example: I love this country and it feels incredibly more "new" and even sometimes more "hi-tech" (e.g. in big cities malls) than western europe... But Poland is receiving crazy funding from the EU to get up to speed. As an EU taxpayer, that said, it's good that at least some of money is used to invest in technologies that are bound to become very important in the future...

jmspring 14y ago
Agree with your point about both the size of the country and the funding they are receiving. That said, when I visited Estonia in the early 2000s, prior to being in the EU, their broadband infrastructure seemed better than that of Finland and Germany (two countries I spent time in). That may have well been due to it's overall size. What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the tech sector there. The biggest tech employers seem to be the government, the banks, and Skype. Maybe Skype buyout V2 will inject more in the way of a startup culture there.
- yen223 14y ago
  "What is interesting to me about Estonia now is the lack of overall diversity in the tech sector there. The biggest tech employers seem to be the government, the banks, and Skype." I believe that's not unique to Estonia. The biggest tech employers in my country are the government and the banks as well (No Skype here).
- jkaljundi 14y ago
  Estonia has ~15000 people working in the tech sector. There are 1500 tech/IT companies, 26 of them above 100 employees. IT/Tech is ~5.8% of GDP (2010). Here is one Estonian Startups list: http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups http://hub.garage48.org/estonian-startups - all in all, there are 100+ active startups in Estonia, which I would say for a country of 1 million people is quite a startup culture. Estonia now has I believe 7 or 8 European startup accelerator Seedcamp winners, trailing only UK, Seedcamp's home country.