Telia Lietuva, the largest Lithuanian broadband Internet access and voice telephony services operator, is planning to invest EUR 10 million to build what it says will be the largest data center in Lithuania.
The Telia Co. AB unit bought a 2-hectare plot of land near Lithuania's capital, Vilnius, for the planned data center, said a press release from the provider of integrated telecommunication, IT, and TV services to residents and businesses of the Baltic country.
The data centre in Raisteniskes, which is located next to the Vilnius-Panevezys highway, will be directly connected to the other two Telia Lietuva data centers in Vilnius, thus creating the largest data center infrastructure in the Baltic States. Growth in sales of Telia Lietuva IT services by more than 20% for several consecutive years dictated the need for such a decision.
“A significant increase in the need for IT services for businesses and public sector organizations during the pandemic has become a part of a new, digital economy, which in turn led to our decision to build a new, modern and sustainable data centre. Having connected three data centers located in different parts of Vilnius into a single infrastructure, we will gain an even greater competitive advantage and will be able to offer our customers unique IT solutions and even more security. Moreover, the Raisteniškės data center will be modular, so we will be able to expand its capacity in the future, thus balancing the activities of other data centers,” says Daniel Karpovic, Head of Enterprise at Telia Lietuva.
He says that an important advantage for the company making a greenfield investment is the fact that it does not have to adapt to existing conditions, so it will be able to decide for itself on the best methods for ensuring both the physical security of data and equipment, the reliability of the services provided and the sustainability of the data center.
The fact that there are no physical obstacles to the future expansion of the data center also played an important role in choosing the land plot. Increasing the capacity of the modular data center easily by a few times will be possible as necessary.
The new data center, just like other data centres of Telia Lietuva, will be connected by fiber-optic cable ring, connecting it to all major backbone Internet networks using two independent fiber-optic connections laid in different routes. This will allow the company to offer DC services distributed through two remote certified Uptime Institute Tier III or equivalent data centres.
In 2021, Telia Lietuva renovated its Zirmunai data centre for almost EUR 1 million and invested EUR 2 million into the expansion and modernization of the Naujoji Vilnia data centre. Renovations and expansion of the existing data centers are also planned in 2022.
