Jul 18, 2026 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
Elisa CEO Topi Manner has highlighted the data center market as a key long-term growth opportunity for the telecom company. Speaking during Elisa’s Q2 earnings call, Manner said the quarter marked the start of the company’s large-scale data center connectivity business, amid Finland’s ongoing data center expansion.
A 2025 study by the Confederation of Finnish Industries and the Finnish Data Center Association estimates Finland’s data center market at around 285MW, with potential growth beyond 1.5GW by 2030 and more than 3.4GW in announced projects. Elisa CEO Topi Manner said the growth is creating opportunities for telecom operators, noting that Finland is an “attractive place for data center operators.”
"During the quarter, we signed our first large-scale data center connectivity deals. And when we talk about large-scale data centers, we talk about newly constructed above 100-megawatt data centers," said Manner. "Overall, in Finland, the data center market is growing. We see more and more projects materializing, and the ultimate size of the market will depend on many variables."
Manner did not disclose the companies involved in Elisa’s large-scale data center connectivity deals. The company has previously partnered with Wind River to deploy a fully automated edge data center. Elisa sees the main data center opportunity in the fiber connectivity linking facilities. While the company expects long-term growth from the sector, Q2 results remained largely flat, with revenue of €551 million ($630m), down 0.3 percent year over year.