The Pangilinan-led Telco aims to finish building its cable landing stations in Aurora and Davao in the first half of 2024.
PLDT plans to expedite the deployment of its cable landing stations in Aurora and Davao as it plans to invest in three new subsea fiber connections that will cover Asia and the Pacific.
According to Gene Sanchez, PLDT vice president and director of global capacity strategy, the company will try to finish building its cable landing stations in Aurora and Davao in the first half of 2024. The $80-million Apricot cable system, which would increase PLDT’s international capacity by 35 terabits per second, will use the Aurora and Davao cable terminals as its base stations.
Attempts will be made to complete both the Aurora and Davao cable landing stations by early 2024, according to Sanchez. He estimates that the two groundbreakings for the Apricot cable system were just a few weeks or months apart.
As part of efforts to increase its capacity to host large-scale data transfer, he said PLDT can proceed with its intention to invest in another three subsea cable networks once it is finished. Additionally, the telecom would have two cable terminals facing the Pacific, which would make it simpler to connect to data offices in the US.
However, in the three new projects it is considering, PLDT is attempting to avoid geopolitical difficulties concerning maritime conflicts between the Philippines and China, particularly as they may pass across territories claimed by Beijing.
Currently, they are debating three new projects. Politics must be handled in each of those initiatives while avoiding the nine-dash line. They will link North America and Asia. Upon completion, Aurora and Davao would simply switch off their cable landings when they arrived from the Pacific, according to Sanchez.
The country used to send voice calls to and from overseas countries using a cable landing station owned by PLDT in Baler, Aurora. Additionally, for military purposes, that cable station served the American bases.
Singapore, Guam, and Japan will all have trunk stations on the Apricot cable network. PLDT is counting on it to increase the effectiveness and speed of data transport among the economies of the Asia Pacific.
For the purpose of preparing for a future rush of technology investments into the Philippines, PLDT aims to reach one petabit per second in international capacity within the next ten years.
PLDT now anticipates increasing its data capacity to 96 terabits per second once it launches the $75 million Asia Direct Cable in 2023 that would connect to East and Southeast Asian nations.
