PLDT Joins APG Consortium

Manila, May 18, 2009 - PLDT and 7 other telecommunication companies in Asia Pacific signed on Monday to build an international undersea cable system, the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG), within the region to cater to the growing demand for bandwidth.

The proposed APG undersea cable system will link Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Philippines, Taiwan, mainland China, Japan, and Korea.

The APG consortium includes PLDT (the Philippines), Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), China Telecom and China Unicom (mainland China), KT Corp. (Korea), NTT Communications (Japan), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia), and VNPT (Vietnam).

PLDT said the cable system will provide additional capacity for growing bandwidth demand and an alternative, diverse routing within the region to avoid some of the areas most prone to seismic activities, which are hazardous to undersea cables.

The APG cable system will span about 8,000 kilometers and will use the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing technologies with a minimum design capacity of 4 Terabit per second. It is expected to be ready for service by 2011.

"The planning and eventual implementation of the new APG project is timely due to the growing bandwidth demand of PLDT and the other proponents. It is also intended to meet the requirements for cable route diversity, protection, and to provide capacity to replace the retiring cables in the region," Alejandro Caeg, PLDT First Vice President for the International and Carrier Business Group said in a statement.

Aside from APG, PLDT is also involved in the $550-million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable project, a 20,000-km long fiber optic cable network that will connect Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and the United States West Coast. Of the said amount, PLDT said it would contribute $50 million.

Reference: PLDT Press Release