E-nation: Estonia

Earlier, in our article about smart appliances, we mentioned that major telecom companies would begin offering 5G connectivity by the end of the year. What we didn’t reveal is that there is a place on Earth where the new connectivity standard is already in force. As of June 2018, mobile provider Elisa is offering 5G in the Finnish city of Tampere, as well as Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia.

The fact that the Estonian capital is at the vanguard of a breaking technology may not be news to those in the know. For those uninitiated, the tiny country in the western corner of the former USSR has spent the past fifteen years building its tech credibility by giving the world Skype, the most widely-used teleconferencing tool on the planet. Under the government’s e-Estonia initiative, they have established wifi hotspots everywhere from city centers to castles to forests to islands, as well as set up a heavily-encrypted smart-ID card network that lets citizens access their medical records, check out library books, and even vote online.

You wish you were born here, don’t you? Well, guess what? You, too, can become a citizen of Estonia. Well...an e-citizen, at least.

In late 2014, the Estonian government branched out to offer its e-Residency program to anyone who wishes to have a connection to the Baltic state. While not giving an individual the right to physically enter or reside on Estonian territory, it allows a unique opportunity for business owners to establish themselves in a European country. The Estonian e-Residency program allows for company formation and access to banking and payment processing services.