 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jean-Marc Slim and joining me today is Michael Holm, data center lead for Telia Finland. Michael, welcome to JSA. I hope everything is well with you. Let's talk about data centers in Finland. What is the current state of the markets around data centers in your country? First, thank you for having me here. Yeah, if we take it shortly, of course, you know, from the history, there are lots of smaller data centers in Finland, but if we are talking about players that could provide capacity in megawatts or over 10 megawatts, then I think we have two other players here in the Helsinki region and one player up in North in Finland. That's really the situation when you're talking about real data centers. I mean, but one thing that we've seen over the last few years, I'd say probably five years, was sort of a new wave of investments coming in in expansions and projects. We've recently had a whole new data center brand launching in Finland, a multi-billion-dollar brand. Why is Finland such an attractive investment landscape at the moment in 2021? Yeah, if you look at Finland, you know, Finland is a politically very stable country. You know, there's really no matter who is in charge, it doesn't change so much. We don't have, we have no corruptions in Finland. We don't have any agitations. We don't have any earthquakes. We don't have any tsunamis. We don't have any major disasters that you have seen in maybe in the middle of Europe this summer. The electrical grid is very, very stable. It's probably the most stable in the whole world. And, you know, as you can see from the weather of side today, we have a very moderate climate here. In fact, you know, 95-96% of the time we can run on free cooling in the data centers. And maybe when you're looking from the money-wise, electricity is cheap in Finland, in the Nordics, comparing to the German market, for example. I think those are the most. And of course, the geographical situation, the proposition, you know, we are very close to Asia and also to Eastern countries here. I think those are the main reasons. So you're building a bridge between Asia and Europe as well. Just to give some context on the energy prices between Finland and the Nordics and the rest of Europe, do you know more or less the difference? Just to give our audience a bit of context, Of course, what is the final end user price that usually depends on how much capacity you buy? But easily, we are half of the price comparing to the normal price in Germany. We have a, at this moment, we have a talking of between 0.15 to 0.18 eurocent per kilowatt when easily in some German market, there could be 0.3 eurocent per kilowatt hour. And this includes everything. So I think that's a major thing. But of course, it depends from country to country. Yeah, and actually, I mean, the Nordics have been famous for the cheap energy prices for a huge abundance of energy as well, and green energy, which is so important. Yes. But I mean, so picking up on the market and how the market is behaving and growing and all that, how is Tellia, what's Tellia role in the marketplace today in Finland and beyond? What are you doing? What are you working on? Tellia is our home market, is the Nordics and the Baltic countries. That is where Tellia is operating at this moment. And in the data center environment, we have one real big data center at 24 megawatt data center in the Helsinki area. That's a modern data center. It was open in June 2018 and built for data center purpose. So it's a new building. When you look at our position, where Finland and Helsinki is, we can serve 400 million people within 50 milliseconds. And I think 50 milliseconds is enough for 95%, 99% of all applications. So it doesn't need to be maybe in the so-called flap area. We have a direct sea cable to Germany, for example, that makes Frankfurt within 20 milliseconds. And then one thing, when you look at Tellia and this data center, we also own the local networks in all of these countries. We have a, I don't know how many thousand local breakouts do we really have. So it's not only the data center, it's also the network behind it and the connectivity between all of these countries. Of course, since this is a new and modern data center, this is very energy effective. We are aiming at this moment close to 1.35, I think. And when we get a little more load, we will be 1.2 in the PUE values. And this data center has been green from day one. We are the only seed and lead certified data centers in the Nordic. It's one thing to say that you're green, but it's one other thing to really prove with a certificate that we have. And from the next summer, all our waste heat, we will be putting back to the Helsinki district heating system. So I think in that sense, we are a very, very modern and green data center. In fact, today I have us in a meeting where we were talking about this European Union, what this is called, Act for 55, Act for EU commissions fit for 55. And I think most of those regulations and these kind of things that European Union is putting on data center business and also another business, we already have them in place. So I think it's a safe selection for the next 10 years, because usually if you come into a data center, you are easily there 7 to 10 years. No, absolutely. I mean, as you know better than anyone as well, the green energy discussion is huge in the industry, but there is a big gap between those who are green and those who say they are, but you don't really know what they actually mean by green. But actually picking up on your heat reviews activities, so sending the heat back out to help heat other places. What are you doing? Where is your extra heat going to? Is it going to schools, hospitals? It's going back to the Helsinki district heating system and the Helsinki for Helene, they are changing to be more greener and so on. So they are using it to warm up houses, they are using it to warm up schools, they are using it to warm up hospitals and so on. It's a one big district heating system that I don't know how many customers they have. But to give an example, when we will be on a fully load someday with 24 megawatt, then with the waste heat we could warm up 25,000 normal households. So that will produce the same amount of energy that you're needing to warm up 25,000 normal finishes. So it's a huge amount. I think that's the thing that is the real green stuff, not the certificate. This is the real green stuff and this will be live from next summer. It sets an example as well, try to place in the industry that we're using. So if you power your data center using green sources of energy and then still use what you produce within the data center to help save even more energy elsewhere, that's when you start becoming the greener of the greener. All of energy is either hydro or wind that we are using for our data center at this moment. But of course, Telia is not just a data center business as well. There's a lot of other verticals within the company. Talk us through what else you're working on, what kind of things we can expect you guys to announce in the coming two years. We are still going through COVID. So I'm sure there's a lot of R&D that's happening behind doors and it's been speeded up by the huge demand for connectivity services and cloud services and all digital services. So give us a glimpse of everything else that you guys are working on and will be doing in the future. Yeah, there probably will be a good talk for many hours, but if we take it down to a few things, Telia has a new strategy to reinvent that connected living and of course 5G is the major thing now for Telia all over the Nordics and the Baltics to be on that level that we should be. In addition to that, we are also doing quite much in how to leverage that network in data and analytics providing services to see various traffic jams and things like that. And also probably one area where we are very active is in the broadcasting. Telia is also a media company these days. We own the television channels. So I think those are the main three things that maybe we are working on over the next year in the bigger picture. We'll see Telia at the Eurovision at some point. Maybe the employees will have an own band there. That sounds good to me. And Michael, so if people want to learn more about Telia, where could our viewers go to to find out more? Of course, if you google Telia, you will find the company web page and so on. Telia.fi slash data center is where you find most about this data center that we have and the other ones. So those are the two things to remember. Telia is not so difficult and a name to remember. No, not at all compared to some others in the industry. But Michael Holm, thank you so much for your time and thank you our viewers for tuning into JSA TV and JSA podcasts and don't forget to check out our social channels for more content. Until next time, happy networking.