Better PH Connectivity Seen Through Undersea Cable System
By Che Palicte, Philippine News Agency
February 23, 2023
DAVAO CITY – Philippine fiber internet provider Converge ICT Solutions Inc. has vowed to provide greater internet speed in the country after the inauguration of the Bifrost Cable System (BCS) Wednesday here.
The cable landing station in Davao for the Philippine branch of the BCS is expected to deliver much-needed internet capacity, redundancy, and reliability between the Asia-Pacific region and North America.
In an interview, Converge Chief Executive Officer and cofounder Dennis Anthony Uy said the system is the first undersea cable line that started from Indonesia to Singapore and Davao, which also connects to Guam and California.
The infrastructure is envisioned to support the booming digital connectivity needs of the Asia-Pacific region and provide a critical, direct link with North America.
“Filipinos need a digital highway and this is a state-of-the-art optical network from the international level to your home,” Uy said.
With the new trans-Pacific cable system in this city, he said they will be bringing in the capacity and bandwidth of Bifrost to various domestic networks.
The 745 square meters single-story facility here will be the first fully owned and operated cable landing station of Converge in the country and is expected to be operational in the third quarter of 2024.
The consortium behind Bifrost includes Keppel Midgard Holdings Pte. Ltd., a subsidiary of Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation Limited, Meta, and PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia International, an affiliate of PT Telkom Indonesia.
Uy said Converge's goal is to make the vital interconnection between the submarine network with the domestic terrestrial network.
“(Our) lives are now connected to the digital world. We need to provide enough capacity and redundancy in the future needs of individual Filipino,” he said.
Submarine cables and their connections to terrestrial networks enable real-time access to business and consumer applications, social media, streaming video, websites, and many other bandwidth-intensive services.
