A German internet hosting company has announced that will build a major data centre in Tuusula, just north of Helsinki.
The Hetzner Online centre is part of a project for a fibre-optic cable linking Finland and Germany. Construction of the underwater cable began in October.
The data centre was originally announced last spring, but now its location has been pinpointed in the Uusimaa region, some 30 kilometres from the capital. Hetzner has found a 150,000 square metre facility in the centre of Tuusula.
Finpro (formerly the Finnish Foreign Trade Association) predicts that the project will bring as much as 200 million euros' worth of investments in its first few years.
In April, Hetzner Online estimated that the centre would be accompanied by 10 million euros' worth of investment in the cable. The government has already invested 20 million euros in that project.
Sea Lion promises high-speed link with Central Europe
The Sea Lion cable is being laid on the floor of the Baltic Sea, parallel to part of the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Rostock. With a price tag of 65 million euros, it is intended to improve high-speed connections to mainland Europe when it goes online next spring.
Established in 1997, Hetzner now has two data centre parks in Germany, both powered by renewable energy sources. Meanwhile an affiliate owns two more in South Africa.
Finland is already the site of data centres owned by Google, Microsoft and Russia's Yandex. Finland is considered a suitable location for data centres because of its chilly climate which reduces cooling costs, as well as its geographic, climatic and political stability and IT infrastructure.
