INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
PLDT Inc. is set to start the construction of a cable landing station and a subsea cable system before the year ends as it further builds up its information and communication technology infrastructure.
The Pangilinan-led telecommunications firm said these undertakings were aimed at serving the hyperscaler industry, whose demand has been on the rise with accelerated use of digital platforms.
Among the projects at hand is the telco player’s fourth cable landing station in Baler, Aurora, which “will supplement PLDT’s international gateway in the northern and eastern borders.” It is slated for completion by 2024.
Another is the Asia Direct Cable (ADC) system, which links China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. PLDT eyes to complete this by the end of next year.
“Apart from the ADC and the international connectivity, PLDT is also leading the charge on 5G rollouts and domestic fiber rollouts on top of all the other platforms to significantly increase the country’s take up of digitalization,” PLDT vice president and technology advisor for enterprise Victor Aliwalas said.
PLDT said it had been working with government agencies to position the Philippines as the next hyperscaler hub in the Asia-Pacific region.
A data center is a facility that stores critical applications and information. A hyperscaler data center provides a much larger computing environment like services provided by Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Alibaba AliCloud, IBM and Oracle.
“We believe that the hyperscalers’ industry will be the next growth engine of the Philippines. We are keen on helping hyperscalers, cloud services and startup ecosystems in the Philippines,” Aliwalas said.
In June, PLDT activated the 14,000-kilometer US-Transpacific Jupiter Cable System. It links the US, Japan and Daet, Camarines Norte and has increased the company’s international capacity to 60 terabits per second.
The Jupiter cable system is seen complementing the data center operations of PLDT, which currently has 10 facilities. Its 11th data center, VITRO Sta. Rosa, is under construction and eyed to be completed by the end of 2023.
“After the successful launch and activation of Jupiter, PLDT hopes to lead the country to become the best trans-Pacific cable hub in Asia, as we work on delivering additional subsea cables and new cable landing stations in 2024,” Aliwalas said.