In 2023, Taiwan’s Matsu Islands were almost cut off from the main island after the two fiberoptic cables that connect them were severed. They were most likely cut by Chinese vessels in a gray-zone operation. The months-long incident accelerated Taiwan’s desire to improve its communications resilience.
Satellite communications are one part of this. Last week in Taipei, British communications company Eutelsat OneWeb held a press conference reemphasizing their partnership with Chunghwa Telecom to provide full satellite communications coverage across Taiwan.
Ukraine’s experience with satellite communications has shown their worth. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation network has been transformative, even though there have also been many issues. Ukrainian soldiers have used Starlink inside Ukrainian territory for military communications and civilians also use it for their daily needs.
Satellites allow communication without cables and without needing to use radio waves over long distances. Instead, users use small personal terminals to communicate wirelessly with satellites that are overhead, and then these satellites communicate to large ground stations that connect to the wider web.
A low-Earth orbit constellation allows much lower latency because the physical distance signals have to travel is much shorter. Additionally, having thousands of satellites instead of just a few in high geostationary orbits vastly improves the resiliency of the overall system.
Incoming second generation systems will even be able to eliminate the ground stations and use satellite to satellite communications to transfer signals around the globe, which is again enabled by the constellation approach.
Taiwan in the past had proactively explored Starlink’s as an option for its communications infrastructure, particularly as a strategic tool to improve connectivity and potentially bolster national resilience. Starlink had reciprocated interest in the Taiwanese market.
However, the possible cooperation foundered. According to Starlink, Taiwan’s regulations make it hard for them to enter. In particular, the two sides stalled over laws requiring that any business in Taiwan be at least 50% domestically owned. This was a deal breaker for SpaceX.
Taiwan is thus considering multiple other partners that could provide an alternative to Starlink, which is far and away the market leader in terms of numbers of satellites.
Eutelsat OneWeb’s multi-million-dollar partnership with Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom is a significant milestone, with plans to deploy 600 satellites and establish comprehensive communication coverage by 2026.
At the press conference in Taipei last week, OneWeb announced that they will expand cooperation with Taiwan, to develop next-generation satellite technology and increase cooperation with Taiwanese manufacturers, extending from key components to satellite manufacturing, ground stations, network systems and network operations.
OneWeb said it sees Taiwan as a critical hub in its low-orbit satellite network, leveraging the country’s advanced telecommunications infrastructure and geographic advantage in the Asia-Pacific region.
Another foreign partnership Taiwan has begun is with SES from Luxembourg. SES is an operator of geostationary and medium-Earth orbit satellites, which includes the establishment of 773 satellite terminals at home and abroad by the start of next year, according to the Ministry of Digital Affairs.
Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom announced the partnership in August with SES in a project aimed at improving the resiliency of the country’s digital communications networks and providing satellite communications for government agencies in an emergency event when mobile and fixed networks are not able to provide service. At the press event, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said they hope to start providing commercial service in the first quarter of 2025.
It has also been reported that Taiwan hopes to partner with Project Kuiper, which is Amazon’s effort to develop a constellation Starlink competitor.
But Taiwan is not planning to rely on services from outside the country for ever. The Ministry of Digital Affairs has been actively developing a space and satellite strategy. In December 2023, the ministry announced plans to develop 700 satellite hotspots in Taiwan by the end of 2024.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs emphasized the significance as the satellite system belongs exclusively to Taiwan and that “the purpose of this system is to provide crucial communication for the military and the government in times of large-scale or near-complete network disruptions. It can serve as a command system for essential communication channels during such circumstances.”
The Taiwan Space Agency will launch two developmental communication satellites in 2026 or later, with unclear plans beyond that to create a fully indigenous Taiwanese constellation. However, these ambitions will take time to achieve. Taiwan has no indigenous launch capability and this will take years to develop let alone mature.
With several different projects in the works, Taiwan is clearly hoping that at least one of them will stick and provide the resilient and reliable communications Taiwan needs in a gray-zone or even wartime crisis. However, there is obviously also the risk that by backing too many horses you lose focus on actually delivering the capability you need.
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