Part of this is the delivery of well-developed national and international data communication, national academic identity infrastructure and all other related services. The news follows the announcement made back in 2015 when Tele2 won the rights to expand dark fibre infrastructure to all of Sweden's universities and colleges through the SUNET network.
"The SUNET network is an extremely important part of the infrastructure for Swedish universities and colleges," said Samuel Skott, CEO, Tele2 Sweden. "I am very proud that Tele2 plays a role in Sweden’s ambition to provide an infrastructure to support the needs of a modern and increasingly digitalised educational and research sector."
The upgraded network will adhere to the strictest security standards and has been designed to meet both current and future requirements, namely 100Gbit/s wavelengths. In addition, great efforts have been made to avoid single points of failure.
"It is all down to being able to handle the digitalisation of education and research. For instance, we see a huge development within in so-called ‘blended learning’, which means that students not only attend lectures and carry out laboratory work, the increase in digital material is huge," said Börje Josefsson, chief operating officer at SUNET. "This has of course great influence in the network traffic. Building a nationwide network, with three redundant fiber paths to every region is a challenge, but thanks to Tele2s quality of the network, and their staff, it was possible."
The network consists of 8,000km of fibre, which is roughly the equivalent of the distance between the North Pole and the equator. The agreement is valid until 2031 and worth over 300 million SEK ($33 million).
"Working with SUNET and the great responsibility that comes with deploying and now operating a fiber infrastructure of this size, has of course developed Tele2 as a company during the years," said Magnus Björk, wholesale director, Tele2 Sweden. "This has, for instance, changed how we work with fiber networks and measurements, so as a company we have definitely grown with the collaboration. The SUNET network is for sure a super network, and we are extremely proud of the collaboration."
