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Midgard Infra to Build Sweden-Finland Subsea Cable with 144 Fiber Pairs

By: IDCNOVARegion: Europe
Nordic fiber firm Midgard Infra is deploying a new subsea cable linking Sweden and Finland, extending its planned Oslo–Stockholm long-haul fiber route into Finland via an unrepeatered subsea crossing. The company, formerly known as Altibox Carrier, announced that the new segment will land on the coast northeast of Stockholm and in the southwest of Finland, spanning approximately 200 kilometers and totaling 144 fiber pairs.

The development comes as Finland rapidly emerges as a key location for Europe's largest AI systems, and the connectivity feeding such compute infrastructure becomes increasingly critical. The new route is designed to share no common landing point, cable, or right-of-way with existing systems serving the Sweden-Finland corridor, offering a fully diverse path that operators building next-wave AI infrastructure are demanding.

Full route details have not been disclosed, but construction is scheduled to commence in early 2027, with the system expected to enter service in 2029. The unrepeatered design places every active component safely onshore, removing complexity rather than adding it, according to the company.

Svein Arild Ims, CEO of Midgard Infra, said: "Finland is fast becoming one of the places where Europe builds and runs its largest AI systems, and compute on that scale is only as useful as the connectivity feeding it. A diverse corridor that stops at the Swedish border isn't a diverse Nordic corridor; it's half a solution. By taking the system subsea on a fully unrepeatered crossing, with every active component sitting safely onshore, we are not adding complexity to reach Finland; we are removing it. That is precisely the kind of end-to-end resilience the operators building this next wave of AI infrastructure are now asking us for."

Founded in 2012 and rebranded this year, Midgard Infra provides international connectivity and data services across the Nordics and Europe. Co-owned by Lyse and HitecVision, the company owns and operates subsea cables and terrestrial fiber between Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the UK. Finland and Sweden are currently linked by several subsea cables, including GlobalConnect's STO-HEL-One, Arelion's BSC North Phase 1, Eastern Light's Sweden-Finland I, and CITIC Telecom International's Baltic Sea Submarine Cable systems. GlobalConnect's Mjolner West and Eastern Light's Sweden-Finland II are due online next year.

The new cable underscores a broader trend in the Nordic region, where data center operators and hyperscalers are seeking diverse, resilient connectivity routes to support growing AI workloads. As Finland positions itself as a hub for large-scale AI compute, redundant subsea infrastructure becomes essential to avoid single points of failure and ensure end-to-end network resilience.