For Sweden’s Telia International Carrier the network is the thing. The Viking Network, built and wholly owned by the company, is an all-optical fibre-based network extending across the United States and throughout Europe.For Sweden’s Telia International Carrier the network is the thing. The Viking Network, built and wholly owned by the company, is an all-optical fibre-based network extending across the United States and throughout Europe. With connections for IP and telecommunication, the network will cover 40,000 route kilometers—18,000 in the US alone—and fifty cities by the end of 2001.

“We are a young company with 750 employees in 22 countries. We’ve built our network, now we have to sell and produce. We have our clients, now we maintain quality. We will expand as our customer base grows and secure financial stability…that’s the Swedish way,” said Johan Ihse, Telia IC’s Global Manager.

While focusing on capacity and IP services continue to remain paramount to Telia IC’s success—IP revenues were up 200 per cent in 3Q 2001—the company is looking at co-location services and managed hosting to generate revenues as well. Ihse says companies will be able to outsource services such as monitoring, engineering and firewall security to Telia IC.

Ihse expects Telia IC to be the third largest carrier in the US by 2004. “Web hosting will be an important revenue stream. We can now provide the reliability and stability with our network and the 100 per cent uptime and customers know we will be there next year.”

This does not mean that the company’s focus has shifted from Europe however. “It might surprise you to know that we have 50 per cent of the ISP market in Poland,” Ihse adds. “Eastern Europe is an important market for us…we understand the market, we expect that our high quality co-location services will catch on quickly. We also expect to do well in the competitive German market, the UK and the rest of Western Europe.”

With Sweden boasting one of the top cell phone penetration rates in the world—close to 75 per cent—one would expect Telia IC to be salivating over potential revenues here as well. “We are moving into a new phase of mobile operators, this is one of our customer targets. Managed services will be a focus as operators need more floor space for infrastructure and development,” Ihse said.

Telia IC currently has data centres in Stockholm, London, Amsterdam. Paris, Frankfurt and New York. The company’s global co-location plans include: Telia Area which is facilities place; Telia Locate is a provisioned rack in a facility; Telia Shield is caged area offering and Telia Speed is a provisioned rack available in a short space of time.