Globe and Dito Tel will work together with foreign telcos to upgrade local data capacities through a submarine cable system in Southeast Asia.
The two Filipino telcos will partner with China Telecom Global Limited (CTG), Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel), and Unified National Networks Sdn Bhd (UNN) to build the $300 million (about P17.4 billion) Asia Link Cable (ALC), the companies said in a joint statement.
In August, Dennis Uy’s Dito Telecommunity Corp. sued leading telcos Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc. for supposedly abusing their dominant positions by imposing commercial demands for interconnection.
Later that month, Globe Telecom asked the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to compel Dito Telecommunity Corp. to pay for interconnection penalties amounting to P622 million.
Envisioned to be a 6,000-kilometer undersea cable system, the ALC will connect Hong Kong and Singapore as its trunk, and branches in the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam and Hainan, China.
The submarine cable system is seen to provide additional hyper-capacity within Asia and boost resiliency for international traffic. It will have a minimum eight fiber pairs in the system, with 18 Tbps/Fiber Pair minimum trunk design capacity, adding more capacity and diversity to existing networks in the region.
“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,” ALC Co-Chair Alan Tan said. “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.”
ALC adopted an open cable system architecture. This enables parties to select and maintain independent line terminal equipment that would suit their customer requirement.
HMN Technologies Co., Limited (HMN Tech) was awarded as the system supplier and is expected to complete construction of the ALC by the third quarter of 2025.
Source: https://www.esquiremag.ph/money/industry/globe-dito-submarine-cable-system-a00389-20221109