PLDT to expand capacity to serve data needs

Telco and digital services provider PLDT Inc. expects to grow capacity to serve data needs with the firing up of the Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) submarine cable system within the third quarter of the year.

“I think it’s going live, AAE-1. It is now connected within Asia, but it is stretching out to connect India, Middle East to Europe,” PLDT chief revenue officer Eric Alberto said.

“Some have already been switched on within Asia,” he said.

He said PLDT invested an initial $10 million in the 25,000-kilometer international cable system through a partner in the consortium that owns the fiber optic submarine cable system.

Investment in the AAE-1 is expected to strengthen PLDT’s overseas links particularly to Europe and Middle East through point-of-presence facilities in Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as expand capacity for data and internet connections.

The AAE-1 has state-ofthe-art 100 Gigabits per second transmission technology connecting the country to international destinations such as Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy and France.

AAE-1 is part of PLDT’s global network of 15 international cable systems.

At present, four of the international cable systems of the PLDT Group land in the Philippines such as the Asia Submarine-Cable Express with a landing station located in Daet, Camarines Norte; the Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 and the Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Europe 3 both landing in Nasugbu, Batangas; and the Asia-America Gateway that lands in Bauang, La Union.

Alberto said PLDT intends to invest more in cable systems given growing data requirements of consumers.

“As more and more of particularly, not only enterprise but also consumers switch to digital, they buy more devices and consume more data and they access websites outside of the Philippines, we do have to buy capacity,” he said.

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