With freezing winters and cool summers, Finland could never be a destination of choice for the world’s sun-seekers.
However, its chilly weather has attracted technology giants such as Google and Microsoft that seek a cool haven for thousands of servers holding terabytes of data from around the world.
“In Finland we are excited that we can finally turn [our] cold climate and uneventful boring society into a competitive advantage,” tech-industry writer Petteri Jaervinen said.
The rapid rise of the Internet and the digital economy have fueled an exponential growth in demand for data storage.
Data banks generate a lot of heat and are very expensive to cool, particularly in hot weather. That means companies can bank large savings by locating servers in countries like Finland.
In 2009, Google bought an old paper factory in Hamina, a town near the Russian border, and converted it into a data center cooled with Baltic sea water.
Microsoft followed suit late last year with a US$250 million project to build a data center in northern Finland.
Microsoft also bought the handset unit of Finnish mobile telephone maker Nokia, but said on Thursday it will slash 18,000 jobs from its global workforce, most of which are at Nokia.
Now, Helsinki hopes a new 1,000km fiber-optic cable beneath the Baltic Sea is to give it an extra edge in the global data race — and a much-needed shot in the arm for its flagging economy.
After two years of recession, Finnish policymakers are desperate for good news — and the cable linking Finland with Germany, which could be operational as early as next year, might be it.
Finnish Minister for International Development Pekka Haavisto hopes the cable can help revitalize the technology industry in a country that once led the field as the home of Nokia, but has since fallen on hard times.
When plans for the undersea link to Germany were unveiled last year, he said that it might one day be hooked up via Finland to another that could run under the Northeast Passage in the Arctic ocean — providing a super fast data route to Asia.
That, he hoped, would make Finland “a decisive link” in the global data network.
It’s not just the weather attracting tech giants to Finland, with its existing 7,100km of domestic fiber-optic cable laid down along railway tracks already a powerful draw.
“Without the cables, we wouldn’t have customers,” said Carl Wideman, director of Invest in Kainuu, an agency which promotes the central region of northern Finland.
The British firm Telecity is already taking advantage of the savings in costs of locating its storage centers in Finland, with several located around the capital.
Walking past banks of humming servers in a massive data storage center on the edge of Helsinki, Telecity’s sales manager Sami Holopainen sees the Baltic Sea cable as “very good news.”
Other Nordic countries are also trying to take advantage of rising demand for data storage.
Sweden, home to Facebook’s first European data center, and Iceland, which boasts a strategic location between Europe and the US, are also cashing in.
“The Nordic countries have fairly similar qualities: cold climate, political stability, good infrastructures,” said Keijo Heljanko, an associate professor of computer science at Helsinki’s Aalto University.
That means Finland’s new fiber-optic cable could give it a decisive edge over regional rivals.
The cable will connect it directly to Europe, cutting out the current transmission route through Sweden and then under the Oeresund strait to Denmark.
Cutting the number of countries data streams have to pass through not only makes systems more efficient, it also reduces the risk of exposing them to prying eyes.
“In Sweden, the intelligence agency has an open and legal mandate to spy on everything that passes through the Swedish networks,” Jaervinen said.
“In Finland, we don’t have any of this,” he said.
For Finland, which is mired in recession and grappling with an aging population and rising unemployment, attracting new industry is vital.
The Finnish government is backing the data-storage drive and has pledged to finance one third of the 100 million euro (US$136 million) Baltic cable project.
Wideman said the goal “is not to just house these centers, but to create jobs around them.”
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS