TeliaSonera International Carrier, a 100% subsidiary of Swedish telco TeliaSonera, this morning announced that it has been retained by social networking giant Facebook to both build and operate a new pan-European managed optical network.
The multi-terabit optical network will provide Facebook with connectivity between Internet exchange points in multiple European cities, and its newest datacenter on the edge of the Arctic Circle in Luleå, Sweden.
Facebook hopes to have its new datacenter operational by the end of this year, with the facility due to be completed by 2014 (see picture below).
TeliaSonera International Carrier says the optical network, which will run over its fiber-optic infrastructure, will scale up to several terabytes per second of capacity.
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Total size of its wholly-owned and operated network is more than 43,000 route kilometers (26,700 route miles), including terrestrial and undersea cable.
The TeliaSonera company has a similar deal in place with online broadcasting community JustinTV and video game community TwitchTV, and, coincidentally, recently announced the expansion of its IP network in the US.
In its latest S-1 registration amendment, Facebook disclosed that it currently has over 240 million monthly active users across Europe. It also said that the majority of its revenue outside of the United States came from customers located in Western Europe alongside Canada and Australia.
The company, which is set to go public in a blockbuster IPO later this month, currently serves over 900 million active users in total.
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