PLDT invests P7B in undersea cable system
PLDT, INC. on Monday said it is investing around P7 billion ($136.7 million) in a new TransPacific cable system that will be built and operated by a consortium of global firms including Amazon and Facebook.
In a statement, PLDT said the fiber optic submarine cable system, dubbed “Jupiter,” will be able to deliver an initial capacity of more than 60 terabytes per second from the Philippines to Japan and the United States directly.
“A consortium of global companies — Amazon, Facebook, SoftBank, PCCW Global, NTT Communications, and PLDT — has signed commercial agreements to build and operate Jupiter which will directly connect Maruyama and Shima in Japan and Los Angeles in the US to Daet, PLDT’s cable landing station in Camarines Norte in the Philippines to meet the rising data traffic and complement cable systems through increased capacity and diversity in these areas of the Pacific Rim,” the company said.
Jupiter will have a length of around 14,000 kilometers that will employ wavelength selectable switch technology.” It is expected to be ready by early 2020.
PLDT said its investment in Jupiter includes the acquisition of complementary terminal equipment and other related facilities in the Philippines, Japan and the United States.
“We are investing in this new cable system in anticipation of the continued explosion of data traffic over the next few years, as households and businesses in the Philippines adopt more and more digital services,” PLDT Chairman, President and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan was quoted as saying in a statement.
Mr. Pangilinan said the investment in Jupiter would allow PLDT to prepare for the emerging “Gigabit Society, where ultra- high- speed connectivity will support a wide range of bandwidth- heavy, lowlatency digital applications and Internet of things services.”
“Jupiter will boost the PLDT Group’s capability to offer its customers bandwidth — heavy broadband applications that require international access like IP- based data, high- definition video content, and other multimedia and digital services,” said PLDT First Vice- President and Head of International and Carrier Business and President and CEO of PLDT Global Corp. Katrina Luna-Abelarde.
Ms. Abelarde noted the Jupiter undersea cable project is designed to allow data service providers like PLDT to ramp up capacity when needed.
PLDT and Smart Communications Senior Vice-President and Head of Network Planning and Engineering Mario G. Tamayo said the consortium members will acquire the fiber pairs, not just a share in the system’s fiber capacity.
“As a result, PLDT can upgrade the capacity of its own fibers by simply investing in the terminal technologies that boost data throughput, rather than wait for the upgrade cycle of the consortium. This will enable PLDT to increase capacity much more quickly and adjust to changing market needs in a significantly more agile manner,” Mr. Tamayo said in the same statement.
The Jupiter cable system will also directly link the Philippines to Japan and the US West Coast, which PLDT says would mean significantly lower latency of the data connectivity.
“As PLDT rolls out more fiber- to- the- home ( FTTH) facilities and Smart deploys more LTE and LTE- Advanced base stations in Smart’s mobile network, data traffic is surely going to rise steeply. It is thus vital that we undertake this project now so we can stay ahead of the curve,” Mr. Tamayo said.
PLDT has been investing heavily in international submarine cables to meet the Philippines’ rising connectivity needs, especially from the business process outsourcing industry.
In 2014, PLDT teamed up with PCCW Global to buy capacity in the Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) Cable System, a 25,000-kilometer undersea cable network system that connects Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and Europe.
In 2013, PLDT and its partners completed the construction of the Asia Submarine-Cable Express, the largest-capacity international submarine cable system in the Philippines with a landing station located in Daet, Camarines Norte.
For the first half of 2017, the telecommunications giant reported its attributable net income rose 33% to P16.51 billion, from P12.46 billion during the same period a year ago, due to the divestment of its equity interest in Beacon Electric Asset Holdings, Inc. last June and growth in its data and broadband businesses.
Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has a stake in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. —