The initiative will triple capacity across around 1,250 kilometres of fibre routes linking key cities including Stockholm, Gävle, Gothenburg, Oslo and Helsinki.
The project, which began in late 2025 and will run through to 2027, will see new high-capacity fibre cables added to existing infrastructure across Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
GlobalConnect said the upgrade is designed to futureproof critical digital corridors as demand accelerates, driven largely by the rapid growth of data centres and AI-related workloads.
“Much of the digital infrastructure in the Nordics is more than 20 years old and is running out of capacity,” said Pär Jansson, SVP, GlobalConnect Carrier. “We are now futureproofing it to keep pace with accelerating demand, primarily driven by the rapid growth of data centres and AI hotspots across the region.”
The programme represents an estimated investment of around €40 million and is expected to increase capacity by 300% on reinforced routes. Construction is already underway at multiple land-based sites in Norway and Sweden, with further work planned across Finland from early 2026.
Alongside the terrestrial upgrades, GlobalConnect is also expanding its subsea footprint. The company has announced multiple new subsea cable projects linking Sweden with Finland, Åland, Estonia and Gotland, covering approximately 240 kilometres. These routes are intended to create additional digital highways across the Baltic Sea and improve redundancy across the regional network.
“This project represents one of the most extensive upgrades to the Nordic internet and marks an important milestone for GlobalConnect in today’s geopolitical climate,” Jansson said. “By tripling network capacity and adding several new subsea cables, we are strengthening regional redundancy and resilience for decades to come.”
The backbone upgrade forms part of GlobalConnect’s broader Bifrost programme, a long-term initiative launched in 2023 to modernise the Nordic fibre network with more than 3,000 kilometres of new infrastructure.
Once complete, the expanded network is expected to support the region’s connectivity needs well into the future.
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