PH-based PLDT invests $80m in Apricot undersea cable system

Philippine-based telecommunications company PLDT announced that it is investing $80 million in the Apricot cable system to further expand its network bandwidth capacity with eyes on drawing global hyperscalers.

In a statement, PLDT said Apricot, the newest international undersea cable system, will boost its network capability to service the country’s growing data traffic driven by more digital services and new technologies, such as 5G.

The new cable system features state-of-the-art facilities featuring 400G transmission technology and multiple pairs of high-capacity optical fibers.

It also features state-of-the-art submersible ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) employing WSS (wavelength selective switch) for a grid-less and flexible bandwidth configuration, based on SDM (Space Division Multiplexing) design.

These features ensure that massive amounts of data traffic will be facilitated, creating exceptional service quality to end-users.

“We continue to invest in international submarine cable systems, which are necessary infrastructure for global communications supporting ICT services. 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,” said PLDT and Smart Communications President and CEO Alfredo S. Panlilio.

Slated to further augment PLDT’s international capacity for data traffic, particularly to the US and across Asia and the Pacific, the 12,000-kilometer-long cable system will have a design capacity of more than 190Tbps connecting the Philippines to Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Guam.

The APRICOT Cable project is the third international cable network system announced by the PLDT Group in the last two years, which when completed would bring PLDT’s participation in 18 international cable systems.

Earlier, PLDT announced its $136.7 million investment in the Jupiter Cable project, and in the 9,400-kilometer Asia Direct Cable system, set to be completed by end 2021 and early 2023, respectively.

Currently, PLDT has extensive participation in 14 international submarine cable systems and one terrestrial system carrying data traffic going in and out of the Philippines.

These include the Asia-America Gateway (AAG), Asia-submarine Cable Express, APCN2, and South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 3 which are routed through PLDT’s three existing cable landing stations situated in Batangas, Daet, and La Union.