A-L WILL LAY FIRST BALTIC SEA DATA CABLE ALCATEL-LUCENT WILL LAY FIRST BALTIC SEA DATA CABLE
Undersea fiber will link Finland with Germany
5 December 2014 by Drew Amorosi - Datacenter Dynamics
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Alcatel-Lucent will lay first Baltic Sea data cable
Google's data center on the Baltic Sea, in Hamina, Finland
Finland’s data center push moves forward with this week’s announcement that networking giant Alcatel-Lucent will supply the new 1,100-km undersea data cable between Helsinki and the Rostock-Ribnitz area in Germany. Alcatel will partner with the Cinia Group – a Finnish government-owned telco provider – to lay the 15 Terabit-per-second cable, with the goal of improving the security and reliability of broadband connections. It will be the first such connection between central Europe and the Nordic region.
The European Commission approved the Baltic Sea cable project and its financing plan in September. The system is reportedly worth €60 million ($74 million). According to Cinia, the project is scheduled to begin construction during 2015, with anticipated completion in early 2016.
The cable project, named Sea Lion, is the brainchild of the Finnish government. Companies are increasingly turning to the region for data center projects, but one issue it faces is reliable broadband connections due to a lack of connectivity with Western and Central Europe.
"The new connection to continental Europe strengthens Finland’s position as a leading country in data centre investments”, said Ari-Jussi Knaapila, chariman and CEO of Cinia, when the project received EC approval in September. “Building fast and safe international connections”, he continued, “is a prerequisite for the growth of digital economy and industrial internet.” This growth is a goal of both the Digital Europe strategy and Finnish government programs, he observed.
Capturing Market Share
Companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yandex have recently located large data center facilities in the Nordic region, taking advantage of its stable power supply and the region’s climant, which translates into lower cooling costs. Nations in the region have continued to climb near the top of Cushman & Wakefield most recent Data Centre Risk Index in 2013, which measures the relative safety of locating in a country. The firm’s analysis showed that Nordic countries are increasingly more competitive in the data center market, but still face some issues.
“The Nordics must be seen as a legitimate location in the global arena where the latency and regulatory arguments are less important when considering where best to site operations,” said Keith Inglis, a partner in Cushman & Wakefield’s EMEA data center Advisory Group, when the index was published last year. He added: “Going forward, we would reasonably expect the region to secure an increased market share but to improve, further investment is required in international connectivity.”
Fast-forward one year and it appears that Finland and the region may be on its way to closing this gap, increasing its attractiveness within the data center market and capturing business that might otherwise land in more established markets like the US, UK, and Germany.
“Broadband connectivity is a major growth opportunity for the foreseeable future and the development of a robust telecommunication infrastructure is vital”, commented Jukka-Pekka Joensuu, executive VP of Cinia Group, in a statement. “We are pleased to begin our cooperation with Alcatel-Lucent on this significant project for Finland, contributing to strengthen its position as a leading country in data centre investments, as well as promoting innovation and increased connectivity to a growth path for the Finnish and European economy.”
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/12/alcatel-lucent-will-lay-first-baltic-sea-data-cable