Arelion carves out a resilient Baltic to Western Europe network path
Arelion has completed an expansion of its Baltic network, constructing a fully diverse, high-capacity route between Helsinki and Warsaw. This route will create a resilient ring for traffic between Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
The new terrestrial path reduces latency between the Baltics and Western Europe, increases diversity in a geopolitically sensitive region, and secures future capacity for an underserved EU region.
Like other expansions it has made in recent years, this route delivers backbone-grade performance with predictable service-level agreements (SLAs) to reduce downtime risk, ensuring reliable business continuity for customers in cloud, financial services, manufacturing and other critical sectors.
“This new route enhances diversity and bandwidth between the Baltics and Western Europe, delivering the secure, low-latency connectivity our customers need to scale AI and cloud applications,” said Mattias Fridström, VP and Chief Evangelist at Arelion.
What is the EU's Connecting Europe Facility 2 (CEF2)?
CEF2is a $39 billion program for 2021-2027 that funds infrastructure projects in the transport, digital, and energy sectors to create a more integrated and sustainable European Union. The program’s key goals include modernizing transport networks, deploying 5G and other digital infrastructures, and connecting European energy markets to increase security of supply and support decarbonization.
A collaborative approach
Arelion is taking a collaborative approach to this new network build.
By combining fiber from regional partners with Arelion’s own infrastructure, the expansion provides enterprises and service providers with scalable connectivity amid increased investment in local markets.
This project, which leverages funding from the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility 2 (CEF2) program, highlights how strategic investment can advance digital sovereignty in a historically underserved region.
Focus on diversity
A big focus of Arelion’s new Baltic route is network diversity.
This diverse terrestrial route connects the Baltics to Western Europe via subsea and land systems from Helsinki through the Baltics to Warsaw, bypassing Copenhagen and Stockholm to avoid bottlenecks and ensure high-availability connectivity for customers.
Leveraging the latest open optical line systems with 400G coherent pluggable optics and 1.6 Tbps wavelength services, the route provides scalability to support the massive data flows of next-generation applications in Europe’s growing AI sectors.
Arelion’s expansion connects numerous Points-of-Presence (PoPs) throughout the region, including:
· Arelion’s Iso-Roobertinkatu 21-25 PoP in Helsinki, Finland
· Greenergy’s Tallinn DC-1 PoP in Hüüru, Estonia
· Tet’s Data Center Pērses in Riga, Latvia
· The Riga TV Tower data center
· The Delska DC2 (formerly RackRay) data center in Vilnius, Lithuania
· The Vilnius TV Tower data center
· Equinix’s WA1 data center in Warsaw, Poland
The investment provides customers with connectivity from Baltic markets into Nordic, Central and Western European data center hubs. It also offers metro routing flexibility in major cities, including Warsaw and Helsinki, and supports scalable IP Transit, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Ethernet, DDoS Mitigation, and other global services.
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Finland’s data center market to reach $5.2B by 2030
Finland’s data center market is poised for new growth. The country accounted for a share of around 4.6% in the Nordic data center market in 2024. According to a new Arizton study, Finland’s data center market size is forecast to reach $5.23 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 53.6% during the forecast period. Due to its strategic location between Western Europe and Asia, Finland is regarded as a favorable business destination, offering seamless connectivity to both markets. Several factors, including the country's stable political climate, transparent regulatory environment, and business-friendly policies, have consistently attracted multinational companies. These factors contribute to the country's growing reputation as a gateway for international business operations in Northern Europe.
About the Author
Sean BuckleySean Buckley
Sean is the Editor-in-Chief of Lightwave. He establishes and executes Lightwave's editorial strategy across its website, email newsletters, events, and other information products. Before coming to Lightwave in July 2023, he served as editor of Broadband Communities. Earlier, he served as senior editor of FierceTelecom and the editor of the former Telecommunications Magazine. He got his start in the optical industry in 1998 when he became the editor of enterprise and optical networks at Information Gatekeepers. He has a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and lives in Dracut, Mass, with his wife, two sons, and his cat, Dove.
