Philippine’s national telecom operator, PLDT Inc. revealed its plan to invest in three ICT projects in Mindanao province that essentially involves expansion of fiber optic networks to increase capacity. The planned expansion will enable the operator to offer better services to its business and residential subscribers in the area.
All three projects will link Davao city with the rest of the country for better connectivity. The three ICT projects constitute PLDT’s fourth cable landing station, seventh state-of-the-art Innovations Laboratory (Innolab); and eighth data center. Davao City is a highly urbanized city on Mindanao, the Philippines with a population of more than 1.6 million, making it the third-most-populous city in the Philippines and the most populous in Mindanao. Davao is the center of Metro Davao, the third most populous metropolitan area in the Philippines.
Davao city is the largest in the Philippines in term of land area. It has a total land area of 2,444 square kilometers. The city serves as the main trade, commerce, and industry hub of Mindanao and the regional center of Davao Region. Davao is home to Mount Apo, the highest mountain in the Philippines. Davao is also known as the “Durian Capital” of the Philippines.
The fourth cable landing station in Davao links Mindanao to PLDT’s three international gateways located in Nasugbu, Batangas; Bauang, La Union, and Daet, Camarines Norte. It also connects to PLDT’s international managed network with points-of-presence in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and the US.
PLDT expects the fourth cable landing station to help improve the flow of international data traffic to and from Mindanao, as well as provide better resiliency and to reduce latency for enterprises, particularly those using bandwidth-heavy data services. The Davao data center which is the first to be built in Mindanao will serve the enterprises by providing hosting, colocation and business continuity services.
PLDT group operates seven other data centers in the country currently and now intends to expand the number of its data center facilities to 10 by 2017 with an unmatched rack capacity of over 9,000. Through the third project or the state-of-the-art Innolab facility, PLDT wants to provide a training hub for ICT services as well as a platform for technical assistance for clients. The showroom could also serve as a venue for events for local programmers and developers.
PLDT will invest a total of around US$ 1billion for telecom infrastructure development and all these three projects are part of these initiatives. These projects are aimed to expand PLDT’s network capacity and quality of services which will benefit industries located in Visayas and Mindanao, and enable them to participate in the emerging gigabit society.
PLDT has accelerated the investments that will help build and strengthen the regions’ enterprises, and enable them to become, not just locally, but globally competitive armed with new digital tools and innovative solutions, officials commented. Apart from ICT projects to support enterprises, PLDT has also invested in its fiber-optic backbone and distribution network. PLDT owns more than over 140,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables in its network and has the most extensive fiber network in the Philippines.
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