GLOBE Telecom, Inc. on Tuesday said it has teamed up with DITO Telecommunity Corp. and three foreign telecommunications companies for a $300-million submarine cable project that is seen to boost data capacity in the region.
The three foreign companies are China Telecom Global Ltd. (CTG) of China, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (Singtel) of Singapore, and Unified National Networks Sdn Bhd of Brunei Darussalam, the Ayala-led company said in an e-mailed statement.
The Asia Link Cable (ALC) project is expected to provide “additional hyper-capacity within Asia and boost resiliency for international traffic,” the group said.
“It will have a minimum of eight fiber pairs in the system, with 18 terabytes per second (Tbps)/fiber pair minimum trunk design capacity, adding more capacity and diversity to existing networks in the region,” it added.
The project will be about 6,000 kilometers long, connecting Hong Kong SAR China and Singapore as its trunk, with branches into the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, and Hainan, China.
HMN Technologies Co., Ltd., the group also said, was awarded as the system supplier and is expected to complete the construction of the project by 2025.
“ALC is a great accomplishment of Asian carriers which overcame difficulties of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) impacts, and it is also the only subsea project with zero face-to-face meetings from the MoU (memorandum of understanding) to the C&MA (construction and maintenance agreement) signing in the industry,” ALC Co-Chair Chang Weiguo of CTG said.
For his part, ALC Co-Chair Alan Tan of Singtel said: “We started planning and designing the ALC cable more than two years ago at the onset of the pandemic, having anticipated the inevitable growth in high-definition content consumption, trade, and innovation in this region.”
“Despite the challenges presented by safe management restrictions, we managed to come up with a system that will help meet the evolving needs of consumers and enterprises and boost local economies today and in the near future.” — Arjay L. Balinbin