MANILA, Philippines, October 2, 2007 – The Asia America Gateway (AAG) Cable Network, which PLDT is jointly constructing with Asian, Pacific and North American carriers, received the Most Innovative Project Award under the International Fixed Network Infrastructure category from a London-based publication recently.

Global Telecoms Business, a magazine for senior management among communications service providers worldwide, cited AAG for its innovative solution to the need of Southeast Asia for large bandwidth to the US/North America.

PLDT Carrier Marketing Management Center Head Genaro C. Sanchez, who attended the awarding ceremony on behalf of PLDT in London, said the award was a great honor for PLDT.

“It is a recognition of the result of deliberate and conscious efforts of the PLDT project team to plan and engineer a solution to meet the Company's objectives in particular, and Asia's needs in general. It is equally a recognition of the quality of international projects that the Company engages in and endeavors to drive towards set targets,” said Sanchez.

“On the business-side, the award sends a very positive signal to our customers that we will meet their requirements with respect to bandwidth adequacy, state-of-the-art technology, and hub and route diversity,” he added.

AAG is a US$553.63-million, 20,000-km long fiber optic cable network that will connect Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and the US West Coast.

AAG will support services such as broadband Internet and broadband applications, and will provide the redundancy needed to avoid major disruptions such as those caused by the recent multiple cable cuts related to undersea seismic activity in routes close to Taiwan.

 
The project is expected to meet the forecasted explosive growth in Asia’s bandwidth requirements for new and revolutionary broadband applications such as IP, video, data, and other multimedia services. It will provide connectivity that can be expanded in the future to Australia, India, Africa, and Europe. AAG is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by February 2009.

PLDT is one of the lead operators and major owners of this first direct terabit-scale submarine cable network between Southeast Asia and North America. Other AAG Initial Parties include the Government of Brunei, AT&T (USA), Bharti (India), CAT (Thailand), PT Telkom (Indonesia), TM (Malaysia), Telstra (Australia), StarHub (Singapore) and VNPT (Vietnam).

PLDT will land AAG at a new Cable Landing Station being built in La Union in Northern Luzon to provide diversity to the existing Batangas Cable Station. The cable corridor in the Batangas area is already crowded by many international and domestic cables installed in the said area.

La Union is ideal for diversity, landing multiple cables, and more importantly for positioning the Philippines as a major hub between Asia and the Pacific. In the AAG project, La Union will be the station that will connect the trans-Pacific segment from the US and the Asian segment that comes all the way from Thailand.

Sanchez said the AAG will also help support the country’s future economic growth as telecommunication requirements increase.

“PLDT’s participation and acquisition of capacity in AAG ensures that the Philippines will have adequate bandwidth to the US and North America as well as Southeast Asia to sustain growth. Moreover, with our selection of La Union as AAG's Philippine landing, the Philippines is all set in becoming Asia's new hub for regional and trans-Pacific cables,” he said.

Aside from PLDT, representatives from Telekom Malaysia as well as project contractors such as Alcatel-Lucent and NEC were also present at the awards gala dinner.