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PLDT, the Philippines’ largest fully integrated telco, will activate the US-Transpacific Jupiter cable system by July this year.

The project, which links the country to the landing station in Daet, Camarines Norte, is expected to further enhance customer experience, the company said. The addition of the Jupiter cable system to PLDT’s infrastructure greatly boosts the telco’s extensive fibre network, providing greater capacity in multiple Terabits per second to customers as well as cable diversity to ensure ability to re-route traffic in the event of undersea cable cuts.

Jojo G. Gendrano , FVP and Head of Enterprise Business Group at PLDT and Smart, said: “Investments on infrastructure like Jupiter allow PLDT to provide the vital connectivity that powers our digital economy, enabling us to help transform the country into a globally competitive and digitally empowered nation. Specifically, this will fortify the Philippines’ position as the next strategic data centre hub for global hyperscalers.”

The Jupiter Cable system is a joint project of global providers spanning 14,000 kilometres from the US West Coast, Japan and in Daet, Camarines Norte in the Philippines. This will bring PLDT’s total number of international cabling systems to 17.

Submarine fibre optic cables are among the most critical components of the internet’s infrastructure, as they serve as the global backbone connecting countries, carrying communications, and enabling e-commerce and the information age. PLDT’s investment in the Jupiter cable system increases and reinforces the capacities and resiliency of the telco leader’s existing undersea fibre links to deliver massive amounts of data traffic going in and out of the country to the US.

Open Cable Model

Jupiter uses an “open cable model,” which allows consortium members to increase their capacities as needed by investing in technologies that boost data throughput. This means that by integrating advanced submarine line terminal facility, PLDT can scale up Jupiter’s capacity even as global data traffic grows rapidly and exponentially.

Currently already the largest among Philippine telcos, Jupiter is anticipated to increase PLDT’s international capacity of 20 Terabit/s to about 60 Terabit/s to US and Japan further establishing its lead, and ready to scale with the growing demands of digital services. These include the delivery of cloud services, FinTech and rich media content, which seamlessly complements PLDT’s existing fixed and mobile services.

“The addition of Jupiter to PLDT’s network will further accelerate the ability of our enterprise customers to execute their digital transformation initiatives,” added Gendrano. It will also enable us to increase international capacity into our data centre—now a major component of the country’s digital ecosystem and enhance the attractiveness of the country as an investment destination. Moreover, it will allow us to uplift the infrastructure we provide to BPO’s to support their hyper-connectivity requirements, not only in Metro Manila but also in other parts of the country. Lastly, Jupiter will help us support and deliver more advanced digital services such as the increasing adoption of Cloud services and the roll out of 5G for the benefit of our customers.”

PLDT has commenced construction of its 11th and largest hyperscale data centre facility to expand its network of data centres, a move that is expected to position the Philippines as the next digital hub and destination in Asia Pacific.

“PLDT continues to expand and invest in new international cable infrastructures to further improve the capacity and resilience of the country’s international network and continue to deliver unparalleled internet service to its customers. Jupiter is key to enhancing our cable network resilience, increasing the PLDT Group’s submarine cable route diversity, and helps assure our customers with sustained capacity availability in support of their growing demand for data and continuing digital transformation,” said Mario G. Tamayo, Head of Technology at PLDT.

Currently, PLDT operates the country’s most extensive international submarine cable network and is set to expand further with the completion of two more major international cable systems namely Asia Direct Cable (ADC) and the APRICOT cable system set to be completed in the next two years.

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