Hitachi Cable, Ltd has just completed an order from TSSL (Tyco Submarine Systems) to manufacture Optical Submarine Cable and Optical Cable Amplifier Jointing for the Guam-Philippines Submarine Cable System (GPCS). We are now in the process of ship-loading the cable at our Minato works located in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture Japan.

The mission of this project is to deploy large capacity optical submarine cable between the islands of Guam and The Philippines to resolve a telecom capacity shortage which occured due to the rapid growth of telecommunications between Southeast Asia and North America. The cables will be linked with other Southest Asian countries to provide an effective telecommunications network.

Many projects of this nature have been planned by various companies since the early 1990's, but all were terminated due to technical difficulties and high costs.

In October, 1997, the Guam Philippine Limited Partnership was founded by the Kanematsu Corporation in co-operation with KDD-SCS (KDD-Submarine Cable System) and PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telecom). This Partnership provides the necessary funds, technology and telecommunications service.

Hitachi Cable, Ltd has manufactured the cabling for this project totaling 3,600 kilometers of Optical Submarine Cable weighing 3,800 tones. A four core WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) fiber type has been applied to the cable, which enables the transmission of more signals than conventional submarine cable.

Since last year, Hitachi Cable, Ltd has also received orders for JIH, Alaska United Fiber System and a China-US project. Our Minato-works factory, is expecting to reach full capacity operation in the near future.