Taiwan plans to deploy 700 satellite receivers across the island

Taiwan Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang stated that by the end of 2024, the island’s economy should be ready for a possible break in all submarine Internet cables in the event of an emergency. This has happened in the past: in February, Chinese boats cut two cables off Taiwan’s Matsu Islands, and in 2006 an earthquake damaged eight cables around Taiwan, disrupting communications and trade across Asia.

“We need to be able to manage latency as bandwidth drops and distribute bandwidth usage,” Tang said.

Tang believes that Taiwan’s biggest danger is the destruction of the island’s physical points of communication: the three largest telecommunications providers and their power sources. She said that China “knows” where they are located and can “hack, block or destroy” them in the event of a “crisis” – thus referring to incidents related to the conflict with the PRC.

To enhance cyber resilience, Taiwan plans to place 700 satellite receivers across the island. They must be configured to receive communications from multiple satellite constellations (a group of satellites working together to provide a specific function such as navigation or communications) in low and medium earth orbit. The government has launched a competition for research institutes to participate in the test and proof of concept round.

Among potential providers, Tang named SpaceX from Starlink Inc., OneWeb, Project Kuiper from Amazon.com Inc. and Franco-Luxembourg company SES Global.

The Taiwanese government would like to have a choice between different companies in this competition and ensure the reliability of communications. Taiwan is now connected to the outside world through 14 undersea cables. The existing satellite infrastructure can provide only 0.01% of the bandwidth of communication channels required by the island. Therefore, satellite systems cannot be a full-fledged backup infrastructure. Even the installation of 700 satellite receiving stations will not be able to meet the needs of the island for fast communication, given that 23 million people live in Taiwan. The island authorities allocated $18 million for testing of such design solutions for the next two years. Audrey Tan believes that Taiwan’s network and information infrastructure is already under massive attack, likely by Chinese hackers. Under such conditions, plans to create a redundant communications infrastructure by the end of 2024 seem very bold.