"When rents get higher and entrepreneurs can no longer afford to live in hives of creativity like London or San Francisco, where should they look to next?" asks the author of the article Eleanor Ross at Branson's website, listing their top pick: Tallinn, Malmö in Sweden, Eindhoven in the Netherlands and Brno, the Czech Republic.
"Along with Eindhoven, Tallinn regularly tops the list as one of the most intelligent cities according to the Intelligent Community Forum. After all, it is the city that gave us Skype. But it isn't just start-ups and kooky entrepreneurs that the city uses tech for. It's everywhere," the article states. "From getting a free bus ride by swiping a smart card that then tracks your movements (all public transport here is free if you're a Tallinn resident) to using a special code to mail a package from locker to locker, Tallinn residents use advanced technology every day. All ID cards have chips in them, and parking is paid electronically using a mobile phone code."
The article states also that Tallinn has its own version of Silicon Valley in the form of Technopolis, which is located near to the airport and hosts a large number of tech enterprises, with both SMEs and more established companies.
The article also praises Tallinn's good wifi network – Tallinn has over 30 WiFi hotspots for its citizens and visitors, most of which are in the city centre and the Old Town, many are near popular tourist attractions. The network, TallinnWifi, may be connected to for free and it has a download speed of 15Mbps per hotspot.
Also the European IT agency is based in Tallinn, as is the NATO cooperative cyber defence centre of excellence.
