KUALA LUMPUR, May 27, 2009 – A consortium of major telecommunications companies signed Monday (May 25) a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to plan and develop the proposal to build an international undersea cable system within the Asia Pacific Region. 

These experienced carriers, all with a growing and ready customer base in their respective domestic markets, include Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), China Telecom (China Mainland), China Unicom (China Mainland), KT Corporation (Korea), NTT Communications (Japan), PLDT (Philippines), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam).  The proposed undersea cable system will be called the Asia - Pacific Gateway (APG) and it is planned to connect Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, China Mainland, Japan and Korea.

The proposed Asia Pacific Gateway will provide additional capacity for growing demand and an alternative, diverse routing within the region such that it will avoid some of the areas most prone to seismic activity, conditions which are hazardous to undersea cables.  The cable system will span about 8,000km and will use the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technologies with a minimum design capacity of 4 Terabit/s.  It is planned to be ready for service in 2011.

“The planning and eventual implementation of the new Asia Pacific Gateway project is timely due to the growing bandwidth demand of PLDT and the other proponents. It is also intended to meet the requirements for cable route diversity, protection, and to provide capacity to replace the retiring cables in the region,” said Alejandro Caeg, PLDT First Vice President, International & Carrier Business Group.

The proposed cable system has the potential to provide an alternative route and/or restoration paths to existing cable systems in the region as it is designed to provide a high degree of inter-connectivity with existing and planned high bandwidth systems.

The proposed Asia Pacific Gateway is highlighted in the diagram below.