Philippines operator PLDT will switch on the United States-Transpacific Jupiter cable system next month, boosting its extensive fibre network.
The project, which links the country to the landing station in Daet, Camarines Norte, is expected to provide even more terabits per second capacity to customers. It will also provide cable diversity to guarantee the ability to re-route traffic in the event of undersea cable cuts.
The company has high hopes for the cable system. The Business Mirror quotes PLDT and Smart First Vice President and Head of Enterprise Business Group Jojo G. Gendrano as saying: “This will fortify the Philippines’ position as the next strategic data centre hub for global hyperscalers.”
PLDT’s investment in the Jupiter cable system increases and reinforces the capacities and the resiliency of its existing undersea fibre links, to deliver massive amounts of data traffic going in and out of the country to the US.
Jupiter uses what is described as an open cable model. This approach allows consortium members involved in the cable’s rollout to increase their capacities as needed by investing in technologies that boost data throughput.
Jupiter is anticipated to increase PLDT’s international capacity of 20 terabit/s to about 60 terabit/s to the US, allowing it to scale with the growing demands of digital services. such as cloud services, fintech, and rich media content, complementing PLDT’s existing fixed and mobile services.
The cable will also enable PLDT to increase international capacity into its data centres and, PLDT suggests, enhance the attractiveness of the country as an investment destination.
The Jupiter Cable system is a joint project involving global providers and spanning 14,000 kilometres taking in the US West Coast, Japan, and Daet, Camarines Norte, in the Philippines. It will bring the total number of international cabling systems involving PLDT to 17.
According to the TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map service, Jupiter’s owners include Amazon Web Services, Meta, NTT, PCCW, PLDT and Softbank Corp. The suppliers include Subcom.
