PLDT launches hi-speed information infra

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) launched yesterday the country's first high-speed information infrastructure that allows Internet service providers (ISPS), corporate intranets, and educational and government institutions much cheaper and hassle-free Internet connectivity to the US and Asia-Pacific.

Nerisse Ramos, PLDT assistant vice president for business solutions products center, explained that the cost of hooking up with I-Gate estimated at about $30,000, is 30-40 percent cheaper than the current set-up.

Normally, she said that an ISP would have to lease half of the circuit from a local telecom company like PLDT and the other half from a foreign firm like AT&T since most of Internet content still resides in the US.

This time, Ramos said an ISP would only have to deal with PLDT since the latter fully owns the I-Gate cable facility.

"More than the price, I-Gate takes away the worries and makes it easier for ISPs to connect to the global Internet since they do not have to talk the different providers," she pointed out.

I-Gate is working with 10 US ISPs. To achieve this, I-Gate uses a 45 megabit per second (mbps) fiver optic link to the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) where several ISPs, both regional and international, interconnect.

Aside from the US, Ramos said I-Gate will also take care of Internet traffic to and from Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Ramos said they expect a number of ISPs and corporations to utilize I-Gate even as she said that PLDT is projecting more than a 100 percent growth rate in its overall data services for 2000.