PLDT, 24 int'l firms agree on $1-billion cable system

The Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and 24 other international telecom firms have signed a deal to build a $1 billion cable system to provide faster connection between eight countries in the region to the US, Europe, Australia and other parts of Asia-Pacific.

PLDT will own and operate the Philippine landing station. Other countries involved are China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The 19,000-kilometer long Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN) will be the first self healing, high bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system in the region. This means that the system will be equipped with greater network resilience and route diversity to ensure uninterrupted telecom service for its subscribers which are mostly large businesses.

APCN 2 is expected to provide a multi-fold increase in telecom cable capacity of the carriers by equipping them with a large bandwidth and high quality transmission technology to meet the present and future burgeoning growth in telecom traffic worldwide.

The system is designed to provide 2.56 terabit per second (tbps) to provide upgradable, future-ready transmission facilities that support internet and electronic commerce.

With APCN in place, it is hoped there will no longer be any problem of international network congestion and slow telecom access, particularly when accessing data and multi-media applications.

To be constructed by NEC Corp. of Japan, the network is expected to be ready to carry commercial traffic by the end of September next year.

Other proponents of the project are Cable & Wireless Global Network, Cable & Wireless HKT, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Concert Global Network Service, Ltd., Global One, Japan Telecom, KDD Corp., Korea Telecom, KPN, LAYER 2, MCI WorldCom, MFN, NTT Com, NCIC, OneLink Cable Network, Starhub, SingTel, Taiwan Fixed Network, Teleglobe, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra and Williams Communications.