MANILA - Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. on Tuesday said a multi-million dollar submarine cable system in the Asia Pacific has been completed, raising the resiliency of its overseas links and doubling its international bandwidth capacity.
Napoleon Nazareno, PLDT president and chief executive, said the $400-million Asia Submarine-Cable Express is the largest-capacity international submarine cable system ever to land in the Philippines.
A project undertaken by PLDT in partnership with leading telecom firms in Asia, the 7,200-kilometer undersea cable network uses 40 Gigabits per second technology that is upgradeable to 100 Gbps, with a minimum design capacity of 15 Terabits.
PLDT chipped in $55 million for the cable project.
The ASE system initially links Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore through a fiber optic cable. In the next phases, China, Vietnam and Indonesia would be connected.
The ASE can also be connected to other major cable systems in Europe, the Middle East, other parts of Asia, and the US.
Among the members of the ASE consortium are NTTCom of Japan, StarHub of Singapore, and TM of Malaysia. The submarine cable system was supplied by NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd.
Nazareno said the project will enhance the country’s global competitiveness, attracting investments for business process outsourcing industries and other ventures at a time when investor interest in the Philippines is on the upswing.
Nazareno said PLDT and its group of companies, including Smart and Sun Cellular, can now serve the increasing international bandwidth requirements of their combined customer base.
“We can also expand our broadband services with new bandwidth-heavy applications requiring international access such as IP-based data, external video content and other external multimedia services,” he added.
Ernesto R. Alberto, PLDT executive vice president and head of Enterprise and International and Carrier Business said the submarine cable project will benefit banks, semiconductor firms, call centers, BPOs, as well as small and medium enterprises that do business through the internet.
“With three landing stations, PLDT now operates the most number of cable landing stations among the telco operators in the country,” Jovy Hernandez, PLDT vice president and head of PLDT ALPHA Enterprise and Smart Enterprise Sales and Marketing said.
The other international landing stations are located in Batangas and La Union.
Hernandez said the three landing stations will be interconnected to enable capacity rerouting for greater resiliency in PLDT’s international network.
"We have designed a future-ready network that can potentially supply more than 15 Terabits per second capacity, initially using 40 Gbps wavelength technology, and eventually 100 Gbps wavelength capability,” George N. Lim, PLDT Network Services Assurance senior vice president said.
The start of cable laying work for ASE was marked by a ceremony in November last year at the landing station in Daet. This is PLDT's third landing station, after those in Nasugbu, Batangas for the Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 and Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe 3, and Bauang, La Union for Asia-America Gateway.
source: interaksyon.com
