Estonian Prime Minister inaugurates a new direct data highway between Estonia and Central Europe

Stockholm – Tele2 AB (Tele2), (NASDAQ Stockholm: TEL2 A and TEL2 B) together with the Estonian Prime Minister, Taavi Rõivas, today inaugurates a new 3.000 kilometer long data highway between Tallinn and Frankfurt to offer significant speed and capacity.

The new fiber-optic data channel allows capacity up to 9.6 Tbit/s and it is the first encrypted direct connection from Estonia to Central Europe. The network is built by Tele2 Estonia on high-voltage transmission lines and gas pipelines. Its key nodes are located in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Berlin and Frankfurt. Currently, Tele2 is also building connections to Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Helsinki, which will extend the data pipeline to 4.500 kilometers.

Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas comments: “Data connections are as crucial as transport and energy connections for a country. Besides security aspects, the new data-highway increases our connectivity with Europe and the common market. The more external connections a country has, the better its organizations’ opportunities are to offer its services in Europe and the world.”

Niklas Sonkin, Executive Vice President Central Europe and Eurasia, Tele2 AB, comments: “For the Tele2 Group, data transmission is a strategically important area as single-users and industrial data capacities are constantly growing. The new Tallinn-Frankfurt data highway connects the Tele2 Group’s existing data routes with the European data hotspot in Frankfurt.”

The new data pipeline is built and coordinated by Tele2 Estonia. The connection between Tallinn and Frankfurt will be able to transmit the monthly usage of all Tele2 Estonia mobile Internet clients within one minute and mediate 118 million phone calls simultaneously.

For more information, please contact:

Lars Torstensson, EVP Corporate Communication and Strategy, Tele2 AB, Phone: +46 702 73 48 79. 
Viktor Wallström, Press Inquiries, Tele2 AB, Phone: +46 703 63 53 27.

TELE2 IS ONE OF EUROPE'S FASTEST GROWING TELECOM OPERATORS, ALWAYS PROVIDING CUSTOMERS WITH WHAT THEY NEED FOR LESS. We have 14 million customers in 9 countries. Tele2 offers mobile services, fixed broadband and telephony, data network services and content services. Ever since Jan Stenbeck founded the company in 1993, it has been a tough challenger to the former government monopolies and other established providers. Tele2 has been listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm since 1996. In 2013, we had net sales of SEK 30 billion and reported an operating profit (EBITDA) of SEK 6 billion.