PLDT announced on Friday it has successfully completed its two subsea cable branches connecting the Philippines to the intra-Asian Apricot cable system that will run between Japan and Singapore.
The 12,000-km Apricot cable system – which is backed by Google, Meta, NTT, PLDT and Chunghwa Telecom – includes branch units to enable landing points in Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines and Indonesia.
PLDT has completed its branches that land in Baler in Aurora on the northern island of Luzon and Digos in Davao on the southern island of Mindanao.
PLDT said the Apricot cable provides an alternative route to the usual West Philippine Sea waters, and is strategically routed to bypass the Luzon Strait and Bashi channel, a fault-prone area due to typhoons and earthquakes.
“Aside from supporting international data traffic, the Apricot cable system’s route also provides resiliency to PLDT's domestic network between Luzon and Mindanao,” said PLDT COO Butch Jimenez in a statement.
The main Apricot cable sports a design capacity of more than 190 Tbps. The Baler branch is the fatter of the two Philippines links with 15 fibre pairs, compared to four fibre pairs for the Davao branch.
PLDT – which owns two fibre pairs in each link – said the cables will increase its international capacity by up to 33% to more than 140 Tbps.
Jojo Gendrano, senior VP and head of PLDT and Smart’s Enterprise Business Group, said the capacity boost would enable the Philippines to meeting growing regional demand for cloud, e-commerce, and content delivery, and support next-gen technologies like 5G, IoT, and AI.
According to Telegeography, the Apricot cable is slated to be ready for service in 2027, three years behind its initial projected service date of 2024.
