  This paper presents a distributed O(1)-approximation algorithm, with
expected-$O(\log \log n)$ running time, in the $\mathcal{CONGEST}$ model for
the metric facility location problem on a size-$n$ clique network. Though
metric facility location has been considered by a number of researchers in
low-diameter settings, this is the first sub-logarithmic-round algorithm for
the problem that yields an O(1)-approximation in the setting of non-uniform
facility opening costs. In order to obtain this result, our paper makes three
main technical contributions. First, we show a new lower bound for metric
facility location, extending the lower bound of B\u{a}doiu et al. (ICALP 2005)
that applies only to the special case of uniform facility opening costs. Next,
we demonstrate a reduction of the distributed metric facility location problem
to the problem of computing an O(1)-ruling set of an appropriate spanning
subgraph. Finally, we present a sub-logarithmic-round (in expectation)
algorithm for computing a 2-ruling set in a spanning subgraph of a clique. Our
algorithm accomplishes this by using a combination of randomized and
deterministic sparsification.
