Globe Telecom inaugurates $25-M cable landing station

NASUGBU, Batangas — The Philippines as well as several other Asian countries are expected to benefit from lower bandwidth cost and faster Internet connection once the transnational $2.1 billion city-to-city (C2C) cable network project starts commercial operations in December.

Ayala-owned Globe Telecom inaugurated yesterday its $25-million (P1.3-billion) cable landing station and backhaul facility here which is part of the company’s participation in the C2C project.

The cable landing station will house the transmission equipment that will connect the Philippines to a 17,000-km. long cables network linking Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan and Singapore. C2C proponents are, likewise, looking at possible extensions to Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Aside from the $25-million infrastructure cost, Globe is also pouring in another $40 million (P2 billion) into the project — $20 million for capacity and $20 million for equity.

Globe Telecom is both a landing party and a capacity purchaser in C2C. The bandwidth capacity that will be produced by the project will be sold to other carriers as well as directly to Internet Service Providers.

C2C is a private cable which allows Globe, SingTel and other participating firms the option to sell capacity to carriers, Internet service providers, and other end-users on a wholesale basis. Other participants in the region’s first private cable system include NCIC of Taiwan, iAdvantage of Hong Kong KDDI and KDDI-SCS of Japan, GNG Networks of Korea, Tycom, and Norwest Ventures of the US.

Phase one or the northern ring of the C2C project will link Japan (KKDI), Philippines (Globe Telecom), Hong Kong (GB21), Taiwan (NCIC), China (China Netcom), and South Korea (GNG Networks) with direct connectivity to China-US Cable Network and Japan-UC Cable Network.

The second phase or the south ring will link Hong Kong (GB21), Philippines (Globe), and Singapore (Singapore Telecom). An Indonesian extension is being looked into in the medium term.

"With the completion of this cable station, Globe becomes the first of the new carriers in the country to have successfully built a cable landing station and landed an international submarine cable into it," Globe vice-president for carrier business John Young said.

He explained that the company built the cable landing station for the main purpose of landing the C2C cable network. A cable landing station is the facility that is used to house the transmission equipment that are part of a submarine cable network. Other parts of the network are laid from the shore to the open sea.

SingTel, which is a part-owner of Globe, holds a 60-percent share in C2C but also has a stake in APCN2, which is participated in by competitor Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. Gokongwei-owned Digital Telecommunications, meanwhile, has partnered with Asia Global Crossing to compete with the transnational projects participated in by Globe and PLDT.

Young said that Globe’s participation in the project will result in increased international traffic handling accessibility. "Competition (with APCN and Asia Global Crossing) will also result in better service and lower rates and will diversify the Philippines’ international connectivity infrastructure," he said.

He added that these positive developments in the telecommunications industry should translate to the country being a more attractive business and commercial hub in the region.

The C2C project is regarded as one of the largest networks in the world in terms of capacity, with a design capacity of 7.68 terabits or trillion of bits per second (tbps) and the ability to carry more than 90 million conversations simultaneously.

Spearheaded by Singapore Telecom, C2C is Globe’s first major venture in submarine cable operations.

The complete C2C cable network is expected to be finished by end-December 2001 although a large portion connecting the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan will be available for commercial activation much earlier. Globe started construction of the cable landing station in October 2000.

Young said that Globe is also in the final stages of building a fiber-optic link or a backhaul facility that will connect the cable station to the central business district of Makati. The fiber-optic link is a 300-kilometer direct-buried ring that will provide what is called in-system redundancy.