Regional telco consortium to put up $300 million cable system in SouthEast Asia

MANILA, Philippines — A consortium of five telco providers in Asia, including two from the Philippines, will invest $300 million to build an international cable system to boost data capacity in the region.

Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. yesterday said it has entered into an agreement with four other telco players in Asia to put up the Asia Link Cable (ALC) that will make landings in five countries, mostly in Southeast Asia.

Apart from Globe, the consortium is made up of China Telecom Global Ltd., Dito Telecommunity Corp., Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (Singtel) and Unified National Networks Sdn Bhd of Brunei Darussalam.

Based on the plan, the ALC will stretch for around 6,000 kilometers and connect Hong Kong and Singapore to serve as its trunk. It will hook up to branches in the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam and China.

Once completed, the ALC is expected to provide additional capacity within Asia and improve the consistency for international traffic of data. The subsea cable system will include a minimum of eight fiber pairs in its system that can run at 18 terabits per second each.

As such, the ALC is banked on to scale up the data capacity and diversity of existing networks in Asia, particularly in the countries where it will be located.

Submarine cable services provider HMN Technologies Co. Ltd. was hired by the group to deliver the ALC, with the target of turning it online by the third quarter of 2025.

ALC co-chair Chang Weiguo of China Telecom Global said the consortium eyes to attract more participants to bring down the cost of operating the submarine cable system.

According to ALC co-chair Alan Tan of Singtel, the group started designing the system at the onset of the pandemic, projecting that the health crisis would push digital demand up. In spite of doing negotiations online, the consortium came up with a subsea cable project that can help meet the connectivity needs of both consumers and enterprises.

“We started planning and designing the ALC cable more than two years ago at the onset of the pandemic. [We have] anticipated inevitable growth in high-definition content consumption, trade and innovation in this region,” Tan said.

An open cable system architecture was adopted by the group for the ALC to enable its parties to maintain independent line terminal equipment that would suit customer demand.

Aside from the ALC, Globe is delivering the $150 million Philippine Domestic Submarine Cable Network—the longest of its kind in the country spanning 2,500 kilometers – that will be activated by April 2023.