MANILA - PLDT Inc said Thursday it was building a new Asia Pacific submarine cable with Asia Direct Cable consortium to strengthen internet capability in the region.

The new 9,400 km long high-performance submarine cable will connect the Philippines, China (with Hong Kong and Guandong province), Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, PDLT said in a disclosure to the stock exchange.

Aside from PLDT, Asia Direct includes regional players CAT, China Telecom, China Unicom, Singtel, Softbank Corp, Tata Communications and Viettel, according to the stock exchange filing.

The project, which will provide additional capacity for internet and digital services using the new route in East and Southeast Asia, is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2022, it said.

The submarine cable can support growing bandwidth-intensive applications such as 5G, cloud services and artificial intelligence. It has multiple pairs of high capacity optical fibers for high-capacity transmission of data across the region, the telco said.

“The ADC (Asia Direct Cable) will further improve PLDT's network resiliency by strengthening its data links to Asia and the rest of the world. This will help PLDT to address the expanding demand for more digital services for both enterprises and our individual customers,” said PLDT chief revenue officer and Smart president Al S. Panlilio.

PLDT earlier said its 5G rollout was "slightly deferred" due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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