Converge ICT Solutions Inc. said Friday it completed a P6-billion domestic submarine cable project that connects the country’s major islands from Luzon to the Visayas and Mindanao to its national fiber backbone.
The company said the 1,800-kilometer subsea cable would make its final landing in Coron, Palawan on Oct. 31.
“We’re pleased to announce the completion of our domestic network’s primary and secondary routes which span the entirety of the country. Not only does this ensure availability of the service nationwide, but with the network design, we’re assured to have a resilient backbone that’s able to carry the tremendous data traffic driven by our million-plus customers,” said Converge chief executive Dennis Anthony Uy.
The subsea cables that connect to the domestic backbone of Converge are laid out in a way that there is redundancy in the network, assuring service availability even in the case of fiber cuts, he said.
“More than the interconnection of the major islands, we’ve achieved a high level of resiliency in the network by ‘closing’ the loops on our primary and secondary routes,” Uy said.
Converge interconnected Visayas and Mindanao during phase 1 of the domestic subsea backbone rollout, first landing in Bogo, Cebu and Cagayan De Oro City. In Phase 2, it re-entered Visayas through Roxas City, Capiz in Panay Island and then Mindanao through Buenavista, Agusan del Norte to close the loop. This is supported by 20 cable landing stations across the archipelago.
The company said that in terms of capacity, it uses 48-fiber core optical cables running on 400G and 800G technology, essentially boosting the network’s capacity to push huge amounts of data throughout the length of the cable.
“All these features on the network design and technology simply mean the connection on our network is more stable, more resilient and less prone to failure or outages, wherever you are in the country,” said Converge chief operations officer Jesus Romero.
With the country’s most modern domestic fiber backbone now live, Converge is ready to connect more unserved and underserved areas in the Philippines, putting it well on track to meet its target of covering 55 percent of Philippine households by 2025.
The companys said that as of July 2021, its fiber backbone reached over 80,500 kilometers while fiber-to-the home port deployment was at a record 565,848 new ports in the second quarter.
The network of Converge in the first half passed more than 8.3 million homes, while household coverage reached 32.5 percent of all households in the Philippines.
