LA Union—Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) may put up another cable-landing facility, this time in the south, the phone giant’s chairman said right after the inauguration of the Philippine leg of the $550-million fiber-cable network.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was present during the inauguration yesterday, said PLDT is “already working on it already” after she asked telecom executive Manuel Pangilinan if the phone company could also put up a similar facility in the southern part of the country.

The newly-inaugurated cable-landing station of the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) is located in barangay Baccuit, Bauang in La Union. This cable project is a 20,000-kilometer long fiber optic cable network that will connect Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and the US West Coast. Of the $550-million total cost, PLDT’s contribution is $50 million.

Eric Alberto, PLDT senior vice president for customer sales and marketing, said the company expects to recoup its investments in five years.  

Pangilinan said an internal study is in the works for a proposal to put up another cable-landing facility. The study will include the possible sites where it will be located; how big the capacity is; expenditures; and partners that will be tapped for the project.

He said PLDT is looking at either Mindanao or the Visayas as the next site. “That’s a logical place to put up the facility. Globe Telecom is putting up its second in Cagayan, so all of a sudden they are putting up in the north. So, if there’s something that may happen in Luzon, we need redundancy in the south,” Pangilinan said.

PLDT is looking at Leyte or Cebu for the Visayas site, while Cagayan de Oro and Surigao are being considered in northern Mindanao.

It will “probably be similar” to the cable-landing station [in La Union], Pangilinan said, adding that “probably it will have one terabit per second in capacity, branching to the east but mainly to the west. Also, we would like (President Arroyo) to inaugurate it maybe by 2010 hopefully.”

The construction of the AAG will enable the Philippines to become a hub for regional and trans-Pacific connectivity and, at the same time, meet the expected explosion in growth in the country’s international bandwidth requirements to support cutting-edge broadband applications such as Internet telephony-based data, video and other multimedia services.

Additionally, the AAG will provide added protection from disruptions such as the 7.1-magnitude earthquake experienced in 2006 that caused massive service interruptions of telecommunications services to corporate and retail customers across the region.

The facility is expected to provide a welcome boost to business process outsourcing ventures, call centers and other growth industries that depend on advanced telecommunications services. The enhanced international connectivity will also support the growth of broadband Internet services, which PLDT is aggressively promoting through both wired and wireless broadband access services such as PLDT MyDSL and Smart Bro Prepaid.

“The AAG is not a conventional cable network. It has been conceived to provide state-of-the-art technology, routing options, render diversity to traditional routes and help improve network resiliency via cost-effective way,” said PLDT international and carrier business group head, Ramon Fernandez.

This project, which is expected to carry international traffic early next year, will also provide for future connectivity that can be extended to Australia, India, Africa and Europe.

The AAG is a consortium of phone companies including local carriers Bayan Telecommunications Inc. and Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc., the government of Brunei Darussalam, as well as 14 foreign telcos—AT&T Corp. (US), Bharti Airtel Ltd. (India), CAT Telecom Public Co. Ltd. (Thailand), Communications Global Network Services Ltd. (UK),  Pacific Communication Pte. Co. Ltd. (Cambodia), PT Indosat Tbk (Indonesia), PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia  Tbk. (Indonesia), Saigon Postel Corp. (Vietnam), StarHub Ltd. (Singapore), Telecom New Zealand Ltd. (New Zealand), Telekom Malaysia Berhad (Malaysia), Telstra Corp. Ltd. (Australia), Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (Vietnam), and Viettel Corp. (Vietnam).

PLDT is anticipating a tremendous growth in international traffic within Southeast Asia and with the US mainland. The system’s maximum design capacity is designed to carry at least 1.92 terabit per second.

As a terminal party, PLDT built a cable station in La Union, which will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the terminal station as well as the submarine cables within the country’s territory, while the consortium exercises joint control over the rest of the facilities.

LA Union—Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) may put up another cable-landing facility, this time in the south, the phone giant’s chairman said right after the inauguration of the Philippine leg of the $550-million fiber-cable network.

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