PLDT invests P3.9 billion in new subsea cable backed by Google, Facebook

MANILA, Philippines — Telco giant PLDT Inc. is investing $80 million (P3.9 Billion) in a new subsea cable system backed by Silicon Valley giants Facebook and Google that would connect Japan to Southeast Asia.

In a statement on Monday, PLDT said its participation in the APRICOT cable system, which will be operational in 2024, will expand the company’s network bandwidth capacity and help it meet growing demand for new technologies such as 5G.

The 12,000-km long APRICOT has a design capacity of 190 terabits per second and will link the Philippines with networks in Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Guam. It features a 400G transmission technology and multiple pairs of high-capacity optical fibers, PLDT said.

“The construction of this APRICOT cable system is vital to the Philippine economy with rapidly increasing data traffic and is aligned with our efforts to make the Philippines a strategic data center hub in the region,” Alfredo Panlilio, company president and chief executive, said.

APRICOT is the third international cable network system announced by the PLDT Group in the last two years. A consortium of four companies — which also includes Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. according to a Bloomberg report — chipped in for the construction of the project.

Once the project is completed, APRICOT would bring PLDT’s international cable systems participation to 18. This is on top of one terrestrial system carrying data traffic going in and out of the Philippines. Earlier, PLDT announced its $136.7-million investment in the Jupiter Cable project and in the 9,400-km Asia Direct Cable system, set to be completed by end 2021 and early 2023, respectively. 

“APRICOT is key to enhancing network resilience because new cable landing stations in Luzon and Mindanao will be built as part of this submarine cable system,” Gene Sanchez, company vice president and international facilities investments management head, said.

“With the cable to be routed via the eastern coast of the Philippines, it will also increase the submarine cable route diversity in the Asia-Pacific region,” Sanchez added.

Internet connectivity remains a serious concern in the Philippines, where social media use is one of the highest in the world. Downloading with fixed connectivity in the Philippines clocked in an average of 31.44 megabits per second, while mobile download speed logged 22.5 mbps on average, data provider Statista found in December last year.

PLDT is eyeing capital expenditures amounting to P88-92 billion for this year.

 Shares in PLDT lost 1.25% to close at P1,259 each on Monday.