Arelion has expanded its Baltic network infrastructure to connect the region's markets with data center hubs across the Nordics alongside Central and Western Europe.

Running between Helsinki and Warsaw, the expansion connects various Points of Presence (PoPs) throughout the Baltics, encompassing Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Arelion touted the route as reducing latency between the Baltic region and Western Europe, bypassing connections in Copenhagen and Stockholm to avoid bottlenecks.

It also offers adaptable metro routing in major capitals such as Warsaw and Helsinki, while supporting scalable services including IP Transit, Dedicated Internet Access, and DDoS mitigation.

Arelion’s Baltic route also bypasses Russia, with the Swedish telecom carrier stressing the route “increases diversity in a geopolitically sensitive region.” The firm added it would secure future capacity for the underserved Baltic region, with partial funding from the project provided by the European Union’s (EU) Connecting Europe Facility 2 (CEF2) program.

The project joins similar initiatives such as GlobalConnect’s subsea cable linking Sweden and Finland, and this week’s announcement that Vodafone Group and Vodafone Ukraine are to build a submarine cable system spanning the Black Sea which bypasses Russia.

The overhaul saw Arelion utilize scalable 400G coherent pluggable optics and the leveraging of 1.6 Tb/s Waves, with Ciena providing such provisions for other endeavors, such as Arelion's Scandinavian network infrastructure.

PoPs connected in the expansion included Greenergy’s Tallinn DC-1 PoP in Hüüru, Estonia, Tet’s Data Center Pērses in Riga, Latvia, The Delska DC2 data center in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Equinix’s WA1 data center in Warsaw, Poland.

Also included is Arelion’s own Iso-Roobertinkatu 21-25 PoP in Helsinki, Finland. In its announcement, the firm cited Arizton research that Finland’s data center market is projected to reach $5.23 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54.6%..

“This new route enhances diversity and bandwidth between the Baltics and Western Europe, delivering the secure, low-latency connectivity our customers need to scale AI and cloud applications,” said Mattias Fridström, vice president at Arelion. “With support from the EU, we are strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty while ensuring that enterprises and hyperscale operators can rely on resilient infrastructure to power innovation.”

Arelion recently upgraded its Scandinavian 'AI superhighway' via newly built last‑mile infrastructure and high-fiber count cable deployment in existing ducts between Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen, Denmark.

The firm’s strategy reflects Scandinavia’s status as a prime hub for data centers, with Oslo alone hosting 423 megawatts (MW) of total data center capacity.