Globe lands 400-km fiber optic cable in Palawan

MANILA, Philippines - Globe Telecom Inc., a joint venture between conglomerate Ayala Corp. and Singapore Telecom, has successfully landed a 400-kilometer submarine fiber optic cable in Palawan as part of the company’s two-year, $700-million network modernization and transformation project.

Emmanuel Estrada, chief network architect of Globe, said in a statement that the fiber optic inter-island connectivity would bring about a richer mobile experience for residents as well as tourists in Puerto Princesa City and Coron, hailed as premier destinations not only locally but worldwide.

“The fiber optic cables will ensure that the network in the area is future-proofed, able to serve heavy stream of mobile traffic and on a larger scale, the entire telecommunication services of the area,” he said.

Globe said the fiber optic cable system would function as a “superhighway” of telecommunications services between Puerto Princesa City to the main Luzon island and the rest of the country and the world via San Jose, Mindoro.

The established interconnectivity would have more than enough bandwidth to serve transmission requirements to enable evolved high speed packet access (HSPA+) and long term evolution (LTE) in Palawan, giving subscribers high-speed Internet surfing, seamless video streaming, fast uploads of photos and videos to social media sites, and a more reliable network for text and voice calls.

The project would replace the existing synchronous digital hierarchy as the main transport backbone of Palawan.

The cable rollout now forms part of the fiber optic footprint of the company, currently at 27,000 kilometers, spanning the archipelago from Aparri to Zamboanga.

This landing was simultaneously rolled out with the Southeast Asia-Japan international submarine cable system in Nasugbu, Batangas, intensifying the fiber optic footprint of Globe in Southern Luzon and the Mimaropa region.

In late November 2012, Globe installed a similar fiber cable facility in Boracay which interconnected the island hotspot with the rest of the archipelago, forming a major part of the company’s fibering of the Philippines.

Following the Coron fiber optic cable landing in May would be El Nido before yearend, providing triple fiber strength to the tourist island.

Globe is spending $550 million to $650 million for its capital needs this year, including a carry-over amount of $100 million from last year’s budget.