The groundbreaking ceremony for Bifrost cable landing system (CLS) of Converge ICT Solutions, Inc. held on Wednesday ushers in the looming improvement of Davao City’s internet connectivity.
To rise soon on an 8,000-sqm lot in Bago Gallera, Davao City, the 745-sqm, one-storey facility is tagged the first fully owned and operated cable landing station of Converge in the Philippines.
“This is the first cable started in Indonesia, and Singapore landed in Davao and connected to Guam and California. This is the first cable in the world connected to Singapore and the US. This is the biggest US technology. Each fiber has 16 terabytes of capacity and this is a six-fiber pair. This is a brand new and state-of-the-art, purely optical network, from international, domestic to your home,” said Dennis Anthony Uy, chief executive officer and co-founder of Converge, in an interview.
The Bifrost Cable System is a new trans-Pacific cable system connecting Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, to the West Coast of North America.
“Bifrost Cable System is going to be the first submarine cable that connects Singapore directly to the US. In the past most of the submarine cables pass through east Asia, the South China Sea, or the west Philippine Sea, going to Japan and the US. This will be the first that goes to the bottom. Singapore becoming a major cloud data center hub it need to have an alternative route,” Jesus Romero, chief operations officer of Converge, told media.
When asked about the company’s capital expenditure for the project, Romero just said it’s a “nine-digit level US dollars.”
The CLS is expected to be completed (or ready for service meaning when can be used) in the third quarter of 2024.
“We are doing the groundbreaking but we actually started the cable landing station. As we speak, the cable chips are being manufactured in France and are being loaded. Once they’re loaded, they go out to sea and we will start laying the cable,” Romero said.
The infrastructure is envisioned to support the booming digital connectivity needs of the Asia-Pacific region.
“Converge invested in this cable about a minimum of 15 terabits of capacity and will be landing here in the beautiful city of Davao. The route of the cable is from Singapore to the US, it goes to the bottom and passes through Indonesia, the Philippines, and Guam. The natural landing will be Davao, which is like the economic hub also and some for Mindanao,” Romero added.
The consortium behind Bifrost includes Keppel Midgard Holdings Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of Keppel Telecommunications and Transportation Limited (Keppel T and T), Meta, and PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin), a subsidiary of PT Telkom Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Uy said that the construction of the Bifrost CLS will open Davao City to investors including digital storage centers and software developments.
“When you have a cable landing station, the gateway to other countries here, its tendency is people need the digital highway and they will put the digital data centers, so this is the storage at diyan ilalagay ang mga data para i-serve in the future to individual’s homes. Magkakaroon tayo ng digital infrastructure dito sa Davao City, which we build already the whole Davao regional highway, connected to the whole Mindanao, Visayas and Luzon. Davao in the future will have economic development tulad ng gumagawa ng call centers, software developments, magbi-build ng digital center storage, ma-e-encourage na sila mag-invest in Davao City dahil meron ka nang infrastructure,” Uy said.
Uy also said Converge will be coming out soon with a middle-class package and the prepaid package fiber for homes.
“The important thing is how you can bring the connectivity to the individual Filipino users regardless of economic status. Digital access is not essential anymore, it’s a right already. We need to find a way, to bring the low-cost and segmented market to the Filipino users,” he said.
The groundbreaking and time capsule laying ceremony on Wednesday afternoon was graced by former president Rodrigo Duterte.
