Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2015 | Page 18
Under the Waves
Finland Leads the Way?
In order to usher in this new Digital Era, the
Finnish Government is pulling all the stops
to build a bigger, better Information Superhighway. In September 2014, the European
Commission approved the Finnish state’s
capital investment on a highly attractive project that will construct a direct high-speed
telecommunications link between Finland
and Central Europe.
This mean, in essence, that a data cable
will laid to the bottom of the Baltic Sea to
take connectivity to another level. The procurement process has already been started,
and the construction work should commence
in 2015. The submarine cable project will be
ready for service by early 2016.
A new company is responsible for carrying out the project under the ownership
and operations of Corenet Oy, a company
acquired by the Finnish state in November
2013 and used as an investment catalyst to
kick-start a strong digital cluster. The newcomer wants to become a significant actor in
developing the speed and security of Finnish
information networks.
Ari-Jussi Knaapila – Chairman of Board of
Corenet and Group CEO for the new company structure – comments that the new connection to continental Europe strengthens
Finland’s position as a leading country in
data centre investments.
“Building fast and safe international
connections is a prerequisite for the growth
of digital economy and industrial internet.
This objective is also included in the Finnish
government programme and a vital part of
the Digital Europe strategy.”
According to Knaapila, strengthening the backbone structures of digital economy is a precondition both for the emergence of new industry and for the development of traditional industry, enabling the
emergence of new business and employment
opportunities.
16 Nordicum
Don’t Crowd the Cloud
Building the submarine cable link is a critical
project for the digital future of Finland and
northern Europe, since the need for connec-
tions has increased significantly: globally
speaking, cloud services are expected to
grow by an approximately 40 % rate annually, and the telecommunications data volume is anticipated to be tripled by 2017.
Presently, data travelling between Finland
and Central Europe has to take a “detour,”
going via Danish networks or their