Converge to complete P6B undersea fiber optics with Palawan ‘landing’

Dennis Anthony H. Uy, founder and CEO of Converge ICT Solutions, Inc. Photo from convergeict.com

MANILA, Philippines—Broadband firm Converge ICT Solutions Inc. expects to complete this weekend its P6 billion domestic submarine cable project that will connect the country’s major islands groups to its national fiber backbone.

In a statement, the company said the 1,800-kilometer subsea cable is scheduled to make its “final landing” in Coron, Palawan on Sunday, October 31.

“We’re pleased to announce the completion of our domestic network’s primary and secondary routes which span the entirety of the country,” Converge founder and CEO Dennis Anthony Uy said. “Not only does this ensure availability of the service nationwide, but with the network design, we’re assured to have a resilient backbone that’s able to carry the tremendous data traffic driven by our million-plus customers.”

The company explained that the subsea cables that connect to its domestic backbone were designed for redundancy in the network, assuring service availability even in the case of fiber cuts.

“More than the interconnection of the major islands, we’ve achieved a high level of resiliency in the network by ‘closing’ the loops on our primary and secondary routes,” Uy said.

Converge interconnected Visayas and Mindanao in Phase 1 of its domestic subsea backbone rollout, first landing in Bogo, Cebu and Cagayan De Oro.

Phase 2 involved connection with the Visayas through Roxas City, Capiz in Panay Island and Mindanao through Buenavista, Agusan del Norte, closing the loops in its network.

The initiative was supported by 20 cable landing stations across the country.

Converge uses 48-fiber core optical cables running on 400G and 800G technology, essentially boosting the network’s capacity to push huge amounts of data throughout the length of the cable.

“All these features on the network design and technology simply mean the connection on our network is more stable, more resilient, and less prone to failure or outages – wherever you are in the country,” Converge COO Jesus Romero said.

With domestic fiber backbone now having gone live, Converge said it is ready to connect more unserved and underserved areas in the country, getting on track to meet its target of covering 55 percent of Philippine households by 2025.

As of July 2021, the company’s fiber backbone has already reached over 80,500 kilometers while fiber-to-home port deployment was at a record 565,848 new ports during the second quarter alone.

TSB