The right to click - why making internet access a human right isn’t just a noble idea, but a regulatory earthquake
The phrase “internet access is a human right” has become a kind of digital shibboleth - intoned with reverence, applauded on podiums, and enshrined in the softer sections of policy white papers. But strip away the fluff, and the reality is far more consequential than the slogans suggest.
Because to declare something a human right is not merely to endorse it. It is to obligate the state. It is to demand action, not intention. Rights are not aspirations - they are entitlements enforceable by law. They are justiciable. And that single shift - from “should” to “must” - carries a jurisprudential payload powerful enough to tilt the tectonic plates of policy.
If internet access becomes a human right, then governments aren’t just cheerleaders for connectivity - they become its guarantors. That means regulation must pivot. From incentives to obligations. From nudging markets to commanding outcomes. The logic of human rights regulation pulls everything toward universality, ubiquity, and usability (USO). It’s not about patching up blind spots with fibre-optic charity; it’s about building infrastructure as though it were water or electricity.
That’s a far cry from what European regulators have been doing for the last two decades. Their lodestar has been the trinity of competition, consumer pricing, and technological neutrality. The focus? Getting more for less. Driving down prices. Stimulating private investment. Ensuring operators respond to market signals - not state decrees.
And respond they did.
Operators didn’t build for the universal ideal - they built for the profitable edge. They followed the scent of demand, ROI spreadsheets in hand. Regulators applauded from the sidelines, occasionally nudging with spectrum auctions, wholesale access rules, or rural subsidies. The game was clear: markets first, mandates later.
But if internet access is to be a right, then that game ends.
You can’t have a human right rationed by commercial viability. You can’t leave it to telco balance sheets to decide who gets connected and who gets left buffering in the digital dark. Rights don’t wait for 5G business cases. They compel coverage now, everywhere, for all.
That’s not just a regulatory adjustment - it’s a foundational reorientation.
It forces governments to rethink the very grammar of digital policy: away from investment attraction, towards infrastructure obligation. It turns telecoms law into something closer to utilities law. And it changes what operators are: not just private firms chasing returns, but public servants in corporate clothing, conscripted into the fulfilment of a state duty.
Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it is a profound thing.
And if we’re going to brandish the phrase “internet access is a human right” with moral fervour, we ought to be honest about the legal, economic, and regulatory revolution that would entail.
Because rights come with teeth.
And they will bite through the cables of the current system.