Filipino carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) today issued a statement confirming that it completed the USD400 million Asia Submarine-Cable Express (ASE) fibre-optic cable system last Friday. In a statement, PLDT president and CEO Napoleon L Nazareno said that ASE is the ‘largest-capacity international submarine cable system ever to land in the Philippines’, adding that it is ‘also the most secure’.
Other members of the ASE consortium are NTT Com of Japan, StarHub of Singapore, and TM of Malaysia. The submarine cable system was supplied by NEC Corp and Fujitsu Ltd. ASE initially links Japan, Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. PLDT invested USD55 million in the 7,200km submarine cable network which uses 40Gbps technology upgradeable to 100Gbps, with a minimum design capacity of 15TB.