E-stonia

Estonia becomes E-stonia with digital revolution - A digital revolution is turning the tiny European nation of Estonia into a nation of Internet innovators. Estonians have put their digital identities onto their national identification cards, and much more.

I saw this report on PBS a couple of weeks back, and was utterly amazed. Estonia (slightly smaller than New Hampshire and Vermont combined) has a population of about 1.3 million people. About 30% are Russian. Its GDP is $27.72 billion (2008 est.). There are about 500,000 land line telephones in the country, and in 2007 there were 1.982 million cellphones.

.ee is the Internet extension for Estonia. http://www.eesti.ee/eng/ is "The State Portal eesti.ee provides safe Internet environment for communication with the state – offering reliable information and e-solutions for citizens, entrepreneurs and officials."