Europe Infrastructure Roundup: Google’s €13B Plan and Telecom Deals

Google’s Finnish data-center plan is a €13 billion investment featured in Light Reading’s regional roundup for EMEA alongside telecom asset sales, takeover pricing and network regulation across Europe.

Google’s Finland Data-Center Investment

The planned investment, worth about US$15 billion, is aimed at AI-related digital infrastructure over the next two years.

Google listed Hamina, Kajaani, Muhos and Vaala among the locations for data centres and related investments, expanding a Finnish footprint that already includes its Hamina site in a former paper mill bought in 2009.

Google presented the Finland package as its largest single investment in Europe so far, making the country a larger node in the company’s regional AI infrastructure map rather than a one-site capacity addition.

Once operational, the new facilities are expected to support 7,000 jobs annually, a figure that includes local retail and restaurant activity as well as jobs directly tied to the data centres.

Connectivity for that expansion is already attached to a local operator.

Elisa already links Google’s Hamina campus and will extend that role to the planned sites.

VodafoneZiggo Tower Sale

The same roundup showed capital moving through older network assets.

Liberty Global agreed to sell VodafoneZiggo’s tower assets to a joint company owned by funds managed by DigitalBridge, TD Greystone Infrastructure and L&G for €669 million, or $779 million.

The proceeds are intended to reduce debt across Ziggo Group, the Benelux company holding Liberty Global’s interests in VodafoneZiggo and Telenet.

TIM Takeover Offer

Telecom Italia added a separate deal signal.

TIM welcomed an improved takeover bid from state-owned Poste Italiane after the cash offer was raised by €0.30 per TIM share, taking the cash component to €1.97 per share.

Poste Italiane is pursuing an integrated digital, telecom and financial operator through that transaction.

Openreach Copper Pricing

Regulation was part of the same infrastructure picture.

From April 2029, Openreach gains pricing room on copper lines where exchanges already exceed 90% ultrafast broadband coverage, with the change meant to push customers toward fiber.

Natalie Black, Ofcom’s group director for infrastructure and connectivity, disclosed the change at the Connected Britain event in London.

Rural Network Deployments

The remaining updates pointed to smaller deployment tests and rural coverage.

Scot-Tel-Gould plans a 6GHz trial of Tarana’s Gigabit 1 fixed wireless access platform around Aberdeen under an Ofcom experimental license, while Asteo Red Neutra and Rede Aberta launched Rurix, a Spanish digital infrastructure joint venture with transport-network coverage for nearly 800,000 rural homes.