ANGELES CITY, Philippines – Leading fiber broadband and technology provider Converge ICT Solutions Inc. has completed its National Digital Infrastructure – a fully integrated, future-ready architecture designed to support the company in bringing cutting-edge technologies across sectors – cementing the Philippines’ position as a vital hub in the global digital ecosystem.
The announcement was made Friday at the inauguration of the Converge Angeles Data Center, a scalable AI-ready facility designed to support the surging demand for content and cloud services. Crucially, this data center will house the Converge Cloud, a sovereign cloud infrastructure.
“Amid the ongoing digital revolution, our capabilities must keep pace with emerging technologies. We have focused on building world-class, future-ready facilities so we can become the country’s leading provider of digital services. With this advanced infrastructure, Converge is now ready to power the digital journeys of every Filipino and make full use of the latest innovations to drive the nation forward,” Uy said.
The launch was supported by several government leaders, including First Lady Louise Araneta – Marcos, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Sec. Henry Aguda, Congresswoman Florabel Yatco, Pampanga Governor Lilia G. Pineda, Vice Governor Dennis Pineda, and Angeles City Mayor Carmelo Lazatin II.
A Full-Stack National Digital Infrastructure
Together with its affiliates, the Converge National Digital Infrastructure encompasses the Converge Group’s digital architecture, consisting of its extensive fiber backbone and satellite network, international subsea cable systems, cable landing stations, and scalable, future-ready data centers. These include the Converge Group’s:
- Nearly 900,000 kilometers nationwide pure fiber footprint, complemented by its growing low earth orbit satellite network
- Bifrost Cable System and Southeast Asia-Hainan-Hong Kong Express Cable System (SEA-H2X) in addition to its current C2C-EAC cable system
- New Davao International Cable Landing Station and Converge La Union Cable Landing Station
- Data Center facilities Caloocan Data Center and Angeles Data Center on top of its existing Reliance Data Center and Clark Data Center
With these broader service capabilities, Converge is all set in scaling its services and fulfilling the burgeoning digital requirements of customers from residential, enterprises, and the public sector.
The Group anticipates growth particularly in its large enterprise and public sector units by introducing more cloud solutions and managed services.
This trajectory will be further strengthened as Converge soon integrates into its operations the transpacific link Bifrost and the intra-Asia SEA-H2X cable system. The 20,000-km Bifrost has landing stations in Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Guam and the USA, with an upgraded capacity of more than 260 Tbps. The SEA-H2X cable system, meanwhile, lands in Hong Kong SAR China, Hainan (China), the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, with an initial design capacity of 160 Tbps.
Both submarine fiber networks, with their respective landing stations in Davao and La Union – owned and operated by Converge – are both ready for service, providing the company with a massive capacity boost and direct access to key international markets, attracting hyperscalers and global over-the-top (OTT) players.
Providing a solid foundation to all these services is the extensive and fully redundant nationwide fiber backbone of Converge, which is the youngest and one of the most advanced in the country, connecting its assets and enabling seamless and reliable services.
“You cannot move into AI, cloud, or advanced tech solutions without a strong digital backbone in place. This is the complete stack digital infrastructure that we have built. This is infrastructure designed for full coverage, reliability, and scale,” Uy said.
Altogether, this whole architecture empowers Converge to lead the charge into a tech-enabled future, consequently, propelling the Philippines as a significant node in the global digital economy.
A Network of State-of-the-Art Data Centers
To facilitate its expanding network operations, the Converge Group has grown its data center footprint with the addition of two new advanced facilities — the Caloocan Data Center and its newly inaugurated Angeles Data Center.
The company announced that the Angeles Data Center has officially finished construction and is ready to house critical infrastructure, both for Converge and onboarding enterprise customers.
Equipped with built-in redundancy for resilient operations, the world-class facility is configured to handle the country’s data residency requirements, as well as high-performance computing workloads, especially for AI and machine learning.
With 12MW capacity which is easily scalable, the Pampanga data center will soon be powered by renewable energy similar to the existing data centers of the Converge Group located in Clark and Pasig.
The Converge Cloud
Sovereign cloud platforms reflect the direction of more advanced and digitalized economies which prioritizes in-country storage and control of critical data across both government and private sectors.
In the Philippines, particularly with the DICT’s ‘Cloud First’ policy in 2020 and considering the rising cost of maintaining on-premise equipment, Converge Cloud stands out as a strong offering, especially for government agencies handling sensitive citizen data.
It will allow organizations, especially the government, to have full ownership and authority over their data by offering a secure alternative backed by a cloud provider using global technology but protected by local guardrails.
The Converge Cloud is seen as a secure and locally-hosted platform that eliminates the need for costly hardware investments for clients and the significant power requirements needed to operate and cool such infrastructure.
Aside from the government, the technology is seen to greatly benefit industries including finance, and healthcare, among others.
