By Eeva Haaramo, ZDNet
It looks like the Finnish government's plan to attract datacentres to the country is beginning to pay off.
Germany-based web hosting and datacentre company Hetzner Online has signed a 20-year deal to use the Baltic Sea cable, a 1,100km undersea high-speed data cable between Finland and Central Europe. According to the project leader at the Finnish state-owned venture Cinia Group, which is managing the rollout of the submarine connection, the contract is initially worth over €10m.
The fibre optic link will strengthen Hetzner's connections from its German datacentres to Finland as well as to other Nordic countries and Russia. Concurrently, Hetzner is looking to locate a new datacentre in Finland and is in the final phase of evaluating sites.
“The fibre optic cable provides the first direct cable link between mainland Europe and the Nordic region,” says Martin Hetzner, CEO of Hetzner Online. “[It] provides Hetzner Online with a broadband and latency-optimised connection between a future datacentre location in the Nordic region and the Central European internet infrastructure in Frankfurt.”
Currently Hetzner Online is looking at potential sites for is datacentre near the Finnish capital of Helsinki. “The new datacentre location is very likely, hence our investment in the cable,” Hetzner said, explaining that the final choice comes down to finding the right site.