The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted GU Holdings, Edge Cable Holdings USA, and PLDT Inc. a Cable Landing License to build and operate the Apricot fiber-optic submarine cable system.
Spanning 12,000-kilometers, the Apricot subsea cable will connect Guam with Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan. It is designed to improve capacity and reliability as well as enhance competition by competing vigorously with other intra-Asia and Asia-Guam submarine cable systems.
The FCC issued the license with specific regulatory conditions and national security commitments to ensure the system's safe operation.
Cable Design and Capacity
The Apricot cable system will incorporate an advanced submersible reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer equipped with wavelength-selective switch technology, enabling gridless and flexible bandwidth configurations. Based on space-division multiplexing design, this innovation allows the cable to optimize bandwidth use and scalability efficiently.
With this in mind, the Apricot cable system will connect Singapore to Japan along a main trunk, with branches extending to Indonesia, the Philippines, Guam, and Taiwan. It also includes five unused branching units, which could eventually extend to additional locations such as Australia and Indonesia.
The main trunk of the Apricot cable system stretches 8,232 kilometers with 12 fiber pairs, and connects to various branches, including the Tanjung Pakis (242 km, 10 fiber pairs), Batam (8 km, 14 fiber pairs), Davao (181 km, 4 fiber pairs), Baler (479 km, 15 fiber pairs), Agat (2,198 km, 13 fiber pairs), and Taiwan (632 km, 16 fiber pairs). Each fiber pair supports approximately 17.6 Tbps, offering a total design capacity of 211 Tbps.
According to GU Holdings, Edge Cable and PLDT, the Guam, Japan, and Taiwan landings of the Apricot cable system, along with the portions of the trunk required to connect those landings, have been constructed and tested, and may be put into commercial operation promptly after the FCC grants the license.
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