The Southeast Asia-Japan Cable (SJC) cable system, worth about $500 million, will significantly increase the amount of Internet bandwidth to deliver better broadband services to consumers across the region.
Globe will shoulder $60 million of the total cost.
First announced in December 2009, the cable was initially planned to be 8,300 kilometers in length, linking five countries and territories.
SJC’s length has since been lengthened to 8,900 kilometers, extendable to up to 10,700 kilometers, linking eight countries and territories while supporting an initial design capacity of over 15 terabits per second.
Globe’s partners in the SJC consortium include Brunei International Gateway Sendirian Berhad, China Mobile, China Telecommunications Corp., China Telecom (Hong Kong) International Ltd., Donghwa Telecom, Google SJC Bermuda, KDDI Corp., Singapore Telecommunications, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International, Telemedia Pacific and TOT Public.
“With the strength of the investors to the project, the SJC will bring more available bandwidth to Asia to support future applications and next-generation technologies,” Globe said in a statement.
The SJC consortium signed an agreement with TE SubCom and NEC Corp. to supply and install the system “based on their decades of combined experience, technology superiority and extensive record of on-time and on-budget project completions.”
Globe said its investment in the SJC system is part of efforts to deliver higher-quality services to household and business clients. Particularly, Globe said it was keen on supporting the country’s growing business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.
“There is continued explosive growth in broadband and Internet use both in consumer and business segments,” Globe business group head Gil Genio said. “The SJC system will help fuel broadband penetration and use of Internet-enabled handsets.”
Once completed, the SJC will be the highest-capacity submarine cable system in the world.
