BIZ BUZZ: Converge to secure Boracay

Boracay Island, the crown jewel of Philippine tourism, used to host about 700,000 South Korean tourists every year before the pandemic.

This was why, when then President Rodrigo Duterte shut down the island in 2018 to pave the way for its rehabilitation, Korean telecommunications giant KT Corp. took the opportunity to roll out the “Intelligent Boracay” project, which provided public Wi-Fi at White Beach and Cagban Port, the gateway to the island, and installed about 40 CCTV cameras in key areas.

A control center was built at Manoc-Manoc, a five-minute walk from Cagban Port, providing real-time monitoring of the smart CCTV cameras on large display screens.

But not too many people know that this project was packaged by technopreneur Dennis Uy (of Angeles, Pampanga province), founder of fast-growing fiber broadband provider Converge ICT.

The deal was that Intelligent Boracay would use the infrastructure of Converge. However, the company wasn’t operating in the island yet at that time. But on Wednesday night, Converge finally debuted its service in Boracay, and with it came Uy’s promise to Malay Mayor Frolibar Bautista that he would fix the infrastructure needed to boost the island’s command center and ask KT to add more CCTVs.

Uy wants to use artificial intelligence, including facial recognition and high-tech alarm systems, adding that maintaining peace and order was very important to sustain the recovery of tourism in the country.

“It is a deterrent to crime,” said Uy.

And while Converge isn’t the first mover in the island when it comes to broadband internet, he is confident about bringing local enterprises like hotels, tours and restaurant operators to the fold. “I think in a year we will be dominant [player on the island],” he told the media.

—Doris Dumlao-Abadilla

Speaking of which . . .

Uy is set to bring in a multinational player as partner in a big data center that will rise in Parañaque City. This will have a capacity of 40 megawatts and cater to hyperscalers, or large cloud service providers that can provide high-capacity computing and data storage services.

The new data center partnership (60 percent will be owned by Converge), is expected to be completed in two years and will occupy a six-story building that will rise on a 1.4-hectare property.

To date, the company already operates two smaller data centers that are mostly used internally.

This “big” project will be announced sometime in June, he said.

—Doris Dumlao-Abadilla