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Speech in the opening ceremony of the Cinia maritimecable (May 19th 2016)

Hyvät kutsuvieraat, meine Damen und Herren,  Ladies and Gentlemen

Zuerst möchte ich hertzlich begrüssen unsere Freunde in Frankfurt. Schön dass wir unsere gemeinsame Fest zusammen feiern können.

Digital highway between Finland and Germany has now been opened. It is a great honor and pleasure for me to congratulate Cinia for this remarkable achievement. I would warmly like to thank all the relevant actors for their work for the C-Lion project.

A very demanding project has been brought to the end. The maritime cable opens the shortest and most secure connection from Finland to the rest of Europe. This cable brings a bridge between Northern Europe and Central Europe and it also opens new possibilities between the continents.

The digital highway means better access for Finnish companies to the European markets. It provides significant opportunities for business growth, particularly for cloud service providers and related businesses. It means better possibilities to develop further digitalization in Finland. It means that the data centers in Nordic countries become more attractive. I also believe it makes Finland a more interesting partner for the strong German industry in new fields of technologies.

Furthermore the Cinia C-Lion 1 cable connection is another great example of the role of the state of Finland as an enabler of infrastructure. The Government visioned the need, set the project going and invested in it. The government was also able to get private equity invested in the project.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We all know that Finland is a country that lives from its exports. One of the important element in improving the competitiveness of the Finnish companies is connectivity. We need faster and secure access to our main markets which means Germany but also the whole Central Europe.

It is just natural that the target for quicker and better links is Germany, an important trade partner for us. Finland has now through its great potential becoming a hub of global data flows linking Northern Europe and Russia to Central Europe and in the future even further linking Eastern Asia with Europe.

C-Lion also provides better opportunities to cooperation between Finland and Germany. Both of the countries belong to the EU top 10 in the digitalization of the economy and society. One of the key projects of the Finnish Government is to create a favorable operating environment for digital services, industrial internet applications and new business models. Digitalization provides possibilities to renew many traditional business sectors but it also enables development of many new businesses. The essential benefit is the increase of productivity, especially in the service sector. I strongly encourage Finnish companies to make quick and flexible use of the possibilities of the digitalization so that they can be prosperous in the global markets. Digitalization can very quickly help a SME to grow into a significant operator on the global markets. There is still a lot of room for improvement and for new innovations. I hope that through the new fast connection will contribute to this process and our cooperation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Datacenters are the basic infrastructure of digitalization. Nordic countries have recently invested a lot in making the Nordic area attractive to the datacenter business. Various international companies have placed their datacenters in Nordic countries. I would like to tell you in three points what Finland can offer for the datacenters:

  • Energy:  We have an extremely reliable nationwide powergrid, renewable energy and free cooling, we have stable and one of Europe`s lowest energy pricing. This means low operational costs
  • Connectivity: Along with the C-Lion we have also state of the art domestic fiber network well connected to global networks. Moreover we have excellent international bandwidth
  • Safety and Security: Finland has a safe geological location and stable society

So I encourage the Finnish and German – and also other interested companies to make full use of the new fast and secure connection to further strengthen the business links between Finland and Germany, between Northern Europe and Central Europe. C-Lion means better business for them. I also encourage the datacenter operators to look at Finland as a potential target for their investment. We have a lot to offer.

Ladies and Gentlemen

I thank for being able to open this remarkable event. Northern Digital Highway is now there. Let us make the best use of it.


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