MANILA, Philippines - Globe Telecom Inc., the country's second largest telecommunicationas company, said regulators have approved its petition to operate its $40-million cable landing station in Cagayan province.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) granted Globe Telecom a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) to operate and maintain an international cable landing station in Ballesteros, Cagayan.

With the approval, the cellular firm can continue to operate and maintain local exchange carrier service, particularly integrated local telephone service with public payphone facilities, and public calling stations in areas nationwide not yet covered by its CPCN, enabling it to charge the corresponding rates.

Globe's cable landing station provides the voice connectivity for its international gateway facility services with its foreign correspondents that will in turn, be piped to the subscribers. Moreover, the cable station will speed up the landing of domestic cable facilities, while allowing Globe to establish direct voice connectivity with its interconnected parties.

"This is an consonance with the objective to provide more efficient and affordable services, and in answer to the increasing demand for the state-of-the-art telecommunications services of the consuming public" NTC said in its decision.

Globe is the exclusive landing party in the Philippines to the Tata Global Network-Intra Asia Cable System (TGN-IACS). The cable project is spearheaded by VSNL International, a member of the Tata Group of India.

The 17,000-kilometer cable network will link the Philippines to Hong Kong, China , Japan , Korea , Singapore and Taiwan with possible extensions to other countries in Southeast Asia.

Direct connectivity to the United States will be provided using existing trans-Pacific cables such as the China-US, Japan-US, and future trans-Pacific cable systems.

Globe said that the cable system will support the huge demand of its broadband customers, especially the offshoring and outsourcing sectors.