PLDT Inc. said Wednesday it is investing nearly P7 billion in a new trans-Pacific submarine cable that will link the Philippines directly to Japan and the US.
PLDT said it was contributing $136.7 million to the new undersea fiber called Jupiter spearheaded by a consortium of global companies that include Amazon, Facebook, SoftBank, PCCW Global and NTT Communications.
Spanning 14,000 kilometers, the new undersea fiber will connect to PLDT’s cable landing station in Daet, Camarines Norte and will provide additional capacity of more than 22 tera bits per second from the Philippines directly to and from Japan, and 17.6 Tbps to the West Coast in the US.
The Jupiter cable system will employ a state-of-the-art, upgradeable technology using an “open cable model” which will allow PLDT to increase the capacity of its own fiber links by investing in the terminal technologies that boost data throughput.
“This project will enable us to further improve the capacity and resilience of the country’s international connectivity and thus continue to deliver unparalleled world-class internet service to our customers,” PLDT chief revenue officer Alfred Panlilio said.
The new cable system is expected to be completed and operational by the third quarter of 2020. It will utilize new technology that will allow PLDT and other consortium participants to quickly upgrade capacity in response to growing data traffic and customer data usage.
“This investment is of strategic importance given that a significant amount of content are downloaded by data users from servers abroad, particularly from the United States and Japan,” Panlilio said.
The addition of Jupiter positions PLDT to serve international connectivity requirements better, particularly for enterprise customers.
“Jupite not only provides increased capacity going to business-relevant markets. It likewise adds strategic diversity options out of multiple international cable system routes and cable landing stations which businesses can choose from,” PLDT and Smart enterprise business group head Jovy Hernandez said.
Under the open cable model, consortium participants in the Jupiter cable system are acquiring the fiber cables themselves, not just a share of the system’s fiber capacity. This enables PLDT and other consortium participants to quickly increase their undersea cable capacity without having to wait for the upgrade cycle of the consortium that is followed in most cable system models.
“This new model in constructing international cable systems will allow us to be more agile and responsive to the needs of our customers,” PLDT vice president for international submarine cable networks Gene Sanchez said.
“We expect that this new project will further complement our existing network systems and address the increasing data traffic consumption of our PLDT fiber-to-the-home subscribers, enterprise business customers, and our LTE mobile data users,” Sanchez said.