AsPac subsea cable link switched on

PLDT in regional telco consortium

MANILA, Philippines —  The Philippines will benefit from quicker data exchange with neighboring countries in Asia-Pacific as a regional telco consortium switches on the 9,988-kilometer Asia Direct Cable (ADC) system.

In a statement, NEC Corp. said it has completed the construction of the subsea cable system crossing China, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Telco giant PLDT Inc. represented the Philippines in the ADC consortium, which is made up of some of the biggest network providers in the region.

The ADC features eight fiber pairs and the project can handle more than 160 terabits per second of traffic. With this capacity, the ADC is expected to speed up data transmission across East and Southeast Asia.

The ADC consortium consists of nine members: National Telecom, China Telecom Global, China Telecom Corp., China Unicom, PLDT, Singtel, SoftBank Corp., Tata Communications and Viettel Group. The group hired NEC to lay down the cable for the project.

NEC boasts six decades worth of portfolio in submarine cable supply, as it is responsible for over 400,000 kilometers of these lines beneath the water.

ADC chairman Koji Ishii said the consortium would play a crucial role in carrying data for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia-Pacific.

“We are confident that this cable system would significantly contribute to the development of the AI industry in the Asia region,” Ishii said.

NEC senior vice president Tomonori Uematsu said subsea cables are becoming more important in the expansion of digital tools. He noted that new technologies like 5G and cloud require cable systems like ADC to support the volume of data that they demand.

PLDT, for its part, is keen on investing in more underwater cables to back up the data demand of the Philippines. Further, the telco believes that the more subsea cables hooked to the country, the more chances it can attract tech giants.

In 2022 PLDT activated the Jupiter Cable System—spanning 14,600 kilometers from Southeast Asia to the US West Coast—that can carry up to 60 Tbps.

PLDT is also involved in the construction of the Apricot Cable System, which goes around Asia and the Pacific, too, and is scheduled to go live in 2025.