China Telecom PH-HK cable link eyed

China Telecom announced a plan to build a submarine cable to the Philippines as part of an offer to improve the quality of internet services.By Miguel R. Camus, Inquirer.net
November 21, 2018

China Telecom, the state-run firm that joined the consortium that won the Duterte administration’s third telco initiative, announced a plan to build a submarine cable to the Philippines as part of an offer to improve the quality of internet services and potentially bring down costs.

This was announced on Tuesday during a courtesy call with officials from the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and National Telecommunications Commission, which a day before confirmed the consortium known as Mislatel as the new major telco player.

According to China Telecom, its submarine cable will directly link the Philippines to Hong Kong and the United States.

Most of the internet that users experience is possible through massive amounts of data traveling around the globe via submarine cables.

Pierre Galla, co-founder at advocacy group Democracy.Net.PH, said that more data infrastructure, including undersea cables linking the Philippines to the rest of the world, would ultimately result to better internet services.

He added that the Philippines holds a strategic geographic location as far as undersea cables are concerned.

“The Philippines, because of our location, is best suited to be the global hub for Asia and Oceania,” Galla said on Tuesday.

China Telecom is studying the use of a cable landing station that is being built by the Philippine government in Luzon. This is the same landing station that will host other cables, including one being built by a consortium that includes social media giant Facebook.

Read more…