Fiber broadband operator Converge ICT Solutions Inc. yesterday said it will invest over $200 million for an international submarine cable that will connect the Philippines to the United States by next year.
In a press briefing, Dennis Anthony Uy, Converge founder and chief executive officer, said the company has signed an agreement with a consortium that has existing international cable station.
He did not give details as the agreement is still up for the US Federal Communications Commission’s approval.
The international cable facility will give additional capacity that will help address the increasing demand for bandwidth of both enterprise and consumer clients, Converge said.
This year, Converge has invested more than $100 million to participate in the Bifrost cable system, a new transpacific cable system connecting Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Guam and the west coast of the US.
To date, Converge said it has invested P6 billion to connect the country’s major islands to its national fiber backbone.
It recently completed a critical infrastructure in its domestic fiber backbone in Mindanao, improving fiber internet service availability for subscribers in southern Philippines.
The critical infrastructure refers to the “Mindanao redundancy loop” that runs through the region, further strengthening the 90,000-kilometer pure fiber backbone of Converge in the country.
The company said the newly-completed segment connects the cable landing point in Cagayan de Oro with Buenavista, forming a network ring that passes through key areas in Mindanao such as Tagum, Davao and Valencia.
Apart from the hardening of the fiber network, Converge said it is also investing to build a data center in Davao to enable local caching of internet content, further increasing network reliability and speed.
