MANILA – Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co (PLDT) on Wednesday announced that it is expanding its international bandwidth capacity to the US to support rising demand for high-speed broadband.
In a statement, PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno said the incremental capacity from this project will allow PLDT to support more industry requirements as well as enhance the quality of experience of customers of the PLDT Group.
“With the deployment of 100G technology in this international link, we will be able to extract more capacity out of our existing fiber cables and support the delivery of high-bandwidth services and applications. This will give our customers the benefits of a much faster and resilient global transport network,” Nazareno said.
PLDT is investing $2 million in the cable upgrade of the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) that will double the bandwidth capacity of the only trans-Pacific cable linking Southeast Asia and the Philippines to the US mainland.
PLDT was a lead investor in the build out of the AAG cable running 20,000 kilometers of high-bandwidth optical fiber linking Southeast Asia to the US for a total cost of $500 million, of which PLDT chipped in $50 million.
“Attuning to globalization and meeting world standards, we’ve readied our network not only in our domestic capacity but also in our international links to better future-proof PLDT in the foreseen surge of more intensive and bandwidth-hungry services, particularly to and from the US,” PLDT Technology Group Head Rolando Pena said.
PLDT leads the country among providers with the most number of international cables as well as landing stations. The AAG cable will be PLDT’s fourth international cable link up for upgrade to 100G technology, following the Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) and the Japan-US Cable system (JUCN). The Asia Submarine Cable Express (ASE) 100G upgrade is ongoing.
“We’ve always anticipated the need to constantly increase our capacity especially in serving the country’s leading industries given their demand for a resilient, low latency, and expansive data-driven network such as the BPO and outsourcing industries,” said PLDT Head of Enterprise, International and Carrier Business Eric Alberto.
PLDT was also the first network operator in the Philippines to deploy 100G in its domestic fiber optic network. When it was launched in 2012, the Philippines rose in leadership position in Asia-Pacific, among only a handful of other countries in the region to deploy 100G technology in its domestic network.
The AAG consortium consists of 19 parties providing connectivity among the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong SAR, Guam, Hawaii and the US West Coast and seamless interconnection with other major cable systems connecting Europe, Australia, other parts of Asia and Africa and using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology to provide upgradeable, future-proof transmission facilities for telecommunications traffic.
By end-2014, PLDT will have an additional 15,000 kilometers of new fiber optic cable facilities with an estimated investment of over P1 billion to reach nearly 100,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables laid out to meet the surge of expected data traffic, more than 4 times than competition.
source: interaksyon
PLDT to spend $2M for Asia-America Gateway cable upgrade
