PLDT pursues int’l landing station in Visayas

MANILA, Philippines - Dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) is pursuing the establishment of a new international cable landing station in the Visayas within the year to boost the company’s robust network.

PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said the planned cable landing facility in the Visayas would augment the company’s existing landing stations in Luzon.

 â€œIt will be probably be in the Visayas for redundancy purposes because all of our cable landing stations are in Luzon,” he stressed.

He pointed out that PLDT has international cable landing stations in Nasugbu in Batangas, Bauang in La Union, and in Daet, Camarines Norte.

Pangilinan said the proposed additional international cable landing station would be constructed together with foreign partners.

 â€œUsually it is a consortium of telco players,” Pangilinan said.

The PLDT Group injected $55 million to the $550-million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) project in La Union involving a 20,000-kilometer undersea cable network.

The project connects Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and the US West Coast using 40 Gigabits per second (Gbps) technology and upgradeable to 100 Gbps, with a minimum design capacity of 15 Terabits.

Other members of the Asia Submarine-Cable Express (ASE) consortium include NTTCom of Japan, StarHub of Singapore, and TM of Malaysia.  NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd supplied the submarine cable system.

The consortium completed the Submarine Line Terminal Equipment upgrade of Segment 1 (Malaysia-Singapore-Thailand-Brunei-Vietnam-Hong Kong), Segment 2 (Philippines-Hong Kong), Segment 3 (Philippine-Guam), and Segment 5 (Hawaii-San Luis Obispo) was completed last October 2012.

The interconnection equipment was installed in April last year while the Segment 4 (Guam-Hawaii) was completed last July.

For his part, PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno told the company’s stockholders during their annual meeting that it has raised its budget for capital expenditures to about P32 billion instead of P29 billion this year as it intends to put up base stations that could withstand strong winds.

PLDT intends to put up base stations in areas that are in the typhoon path to withstand winds of at least 300 kilometers per hour and to attain a 100 percent 3G (Third Generation) coverage, build more long term evolution (LTE) sites, expand its fiber optic network to 90,000 kilometers from about 78,000 kilometers, a new international cable system, and additional investment in service delivery platforms and network intelligence.

PLDT spent P28.8 billion for capital expenditures last year or 21 percent lower than last year’s P36.4 billion.

The amount last year was used to expand 2G coverage to 99 percent, 3G coverage to 71 percent, and 4G coverage to 27 percent and at the same time increase its fiber optic cable network to around 78,000 kilometers including 100 percent fiber connectivity from base stations to the core, pass the two million homes, and additional international cable capacity.