Construction of a submarine telecommunications cable stretching from Finland to Rostock, Germany began on Monday in Santahamina outside Helsinki. The cable, dubbed "Sea Lion", is expected to greatly improve connection speeds between Finland and mainland Europe, and eventually to Asia as well via the Northeast Passage shipping route.
The cable was built by the French telecom equipment company Alcatel Lucent, and designed, funded and operated by the Finnish firm Cinia Group. The company says that together with the above-ground cable network the direct optic cable will make possible some of the world's fastest telecommunications connections to global networks.
Kiss of life for companies, investments
Telecom traffic is widely expected to multiply many times over in the coming years. The undersea cable will likely encourage data centres and companies that use them to come to Finland.
"This project will give Finland the opportunity to become one of the leading countries in industrial internet services," says Eero Heliövaara from the ownership steering unit at the Prime Minister's Office.
The Finnish government, banking concern OP-Pohjola and insurance company Ilmarinen have together invested some 100 million euros into the cable project. That investment is expected to pay for itself many times over once the business sector gets a boost from the new telecom jump.
"We estimate about 2-3 billion euros worth of private data centre investments to pour in over the next ten years," Cinia CEO Ari-Jusi Knaapila says. A direct connection to the cable has already been negoatiated for TeliaSonera and German Hetzner Online data centres.
The Sea Lion cable will be 1,170 km long and weight 3,355 tonnes. It will be laid this autumn and be operational by spring, 2016.