Eastern lays down P1-B fiber network

Eastern Communications is laying down a 240-kilometer fiber network to service industrial parks and economic zones in Tagaytay, Cavite, Laguna and Batangas.

The backhaul project is a strategic initiative to help Eastern realize its long-term revenue goal of P5 billion for the next five years, company officials said.

They explained that the backhaul infrastructure and support costs P1 billion and is critical to Eastern’s expansion, since many multinational corporations and BPOs are relocating to various economic zones and industrial parks located in Tagaytay, Cavite, Laguna and Batangas. This means there will be more opportunities for business development in the areas. 

The expansion will also reach Nasugbu enabling the company to connect to its submarine cables thereby providing greater global connectivity. 

“Eastern’s backhaul expansion will provide us with three business opportunities. Primarily, we will provide connectivity to more than 600 ecozones and industrial parks along the route where the backhaul will run. Second, it will allow the company to maximize the submarine cables because of the additional bandwidth, and thirdly, it will allow us to offer greater bandwidth to other carriers and telecommunications companies,” said to Edwin Domingo, marketing, sales and business development head of Eastern.

With the new infrastructure in place, greater productivity can be realized by the various economic zones and industrial parks by providing faster, better and more reliable connectivity, the company noted.

To avoid the inconvenience to the public posed by the laying of cable and the long time and enormous manpower required, Eastern employed the horizontal directional drilling (HDD) technology, which avoids breaking the road to dig deep trenches. HDD machines drill through a small hole and under the road up to 350 meters underground, and in a controlled direction. A detection device above ground checks and guides the underground activity until the end of the drill comes up to the exit hole. Hence, instead of digging a 350-meter trench that normally takes weeks, now takes only two holes – entrance and exit - and in just six hours.