Six Scandinavian companies, linked to telecommunication, have expressed their willingness to invest in Groningen, one of the northern regions in the Netherlands. The companies involved are TeliaSonera, Damovo, isMobile, AlphaCT, Lokomo and Joltid. TeliaSonera is involved in the development of a broadband infrastructure. The other companies are providing numerous value-added services. Lokomo for example is a company with ideas and products for efficient service life-cycle management. isMobile is involved in combined field service applications and mobile services.
All parties will introduce themselves on a special meeting in Groningen planned for next week. This meeting, named “Business Acceleration from the North” is sponsored by the Dutch Scandinavian Trade Agency, the Municipality of the city of Groningen and TeliaSonera International Carrier. At this meeting all parties will introduce several innovative ideas from Scandinavia and show how these innovations can create new opportunities for the northern part of The Netherlands.
One of the parties involved, Swedish telecom operator Telia, announced earlier a massive investment in the region of Groningen to connect this Dutch province to the rest of the world. To achieve this Telia is going to install a cable fiber connection between the city of Groningen and Gieten , a small town to the south-east. Telia exploits a glass fiber cable that runs from Amsterdam to Hamburg, on to Dusseldorf and back to Amsterdam again. But this cable misses Groningen by just 15 kilometers. Telia decided to construct a connection with the fiber network of the city of Groningen.. This means that Groningen will be connected to Telia’s international Viking network with connections in Scandinavia, Russia and the United States.
TeliaSonera Internatinal Carrier now has invited other Scandinavian companies to deliver value-added services on this network. Telia is working on this project with as consortium of investors and is looking at the County council for financial support. Groningen is trying hard to put itself on the map as an ICT-City and this investment by TeliaSonera means a big boost for this initiative.
