Fiber broadband operator Converge ICT Solutions Inc. this month completed its P6-billion domestic submarine cable connecting the country’s major islands - Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, to its national fiber backbone.

The 1,800 kilometer subsea cable makes its final landing in Coron, Palawan on Sunday, October 31, 2021.

"Our domestic network’s primary and secondary routes ensure the availability of our service nationwide and provides a resilient backbone to carry the data traffic driven by our million-plus customers,” remarked Converge founder and CEO Dennis Anthony Uy.

The subsea cables connecting Converge's domestic backbone are laid out to provide redundancy in the network, assuring service availability even in the case of fiber cuts.

“More than the interconnection of the major islands, we’ve achieved a high level of resiliency by ‘closing’ the loops on our primary and secondary routes,” Uy pointed out.

Converge interconnected Visayas and Mindanao during Phase 1 of its domestic subsea backbone rollout, first landing in Bogo, Cebu and Cagayan De Oro.

In Phase 2, the cables re-entered Visayas through Roxas City, Capiz in Panay Island and Mindanao through Buenavista, Agusan del Norte.

This closed the loops in the network, which has 20 cable landing stations across the archipelago.

To boost the network’s capacity for transmitting huge amounts of data throughout the length of the cable, Converge used 48-fiber core optical cables running on 400G and 800G technology.

“All these features simply mean the connection on our network is more stable, more resilient and less prone to failure or outages - wherever you are in the country,” confirmed Converge Chief Operations Officer Jesus C. Romero.

With its domestic fiber backbone now live, Converge is ready to connect more unserved and underserved areas in the Philippines, putting it well on track to meet its target of covering 55 percent of local households by 2025.

As of July 2021, the company’s fiber backbone has already reached over 80,500 kilometers while fiber-to-the home port deployment was at a record 565,848 new ports during the second quarter alone.

In the first half of 2021, Converge has covered more than 8.3 million homes, while household coverage stood at 32.5% of all households in the Philippines.