Two undersea cables connecting Taiwan to the offshore island Matsu Islands were disconnected due to unknown reasons early Wednesday morning, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said at a press conference this morning.
Chunghwa Telecom announced that the No. 3 Taiwan-Matsu cable experienced an outage at 1:36 p.m. on January 15, followed by the No. 2 Taiwan-Matsu cable at 5:34 a.m. this morning.
Digital Affairs Minister Huang Yennun (黃彥男) said the government received information on the complete cable failure at 5:34 a.m., triggering emergency response measures. The failure of the No. 2 Taiwan-Matsu failure, which is suspected to be completely severed, has been preliminarily attributed to the natural degradation of fiber optic cables by ocean currents. The No. 3 Taiwan-Matsu cable was completely severed in the previous incident.
Ministry of Digital Affairs Deputy Minister Chiueh Herming (闕河鳴) said there have been four such cable “disruptions” in 2025, compared to three both in 2023 and 2024. Coast Guard radar did not detect any suspicious vessels near the cable break sites.
Huang said Chunghwa Telecom has activated a backup microwave transmission service to ensure the continuation of services in the Matsu Islands. Based on current maritime conditions, the submarine cables are expected to be repaired by the end of February at the earliest.
The Matsu region currently has access to nine non-geostationary satellites — one from Luxembourgish provider SES Global, eight from the U.K.’s Eutelsat OneWeb — for use by the fire department, police department, Lienchiang County government and Chunghwa Telecom base stations. These satellites will serve as backups to the microwave transmission system and will be used for disaster response and command system operations, the digital ministry said.
Taiwan currently depends on a network of 10 domestic and 14 international undersea cables for its communications, according to Digital Ministry’s Department of Resource Management Director Niu Hsin-jen (牛信仁).
These undersea cables have recently been frequently damaged by Chinese vessels, stoking concerns over China’s use of gray-zone operations to pressure Taiwan to accept unification.
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