Taiwan is expected to have access to low earth orbit satellite internet service by the end of the month, a step the government says is crucial in case a Chinese attack cripples the island’s communications.
The forthcoming service is via a contract between Taiwan’s main telecoms company, Chunghwa, and a UK-European company, Eutelsat OneWeb, signed last year, and marks a new milestone in Taiwan’s efforts to address technological vulnerabilities, particularly its internet access, after attempts to get access to Elon Musk’s Starlink service collapsed.
Chunghwa co-president Alex Chien said 24-hour coverage was expected by the end of the month, with commercial access as soon as sufficient bandwidth was reached.
Taiwan is under the threat of attack or invasion by China, which claims historical sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to annex it, by military force if necessary. In the meantime it is under a near constant barrage of cyber-attacks, and has had some of its 15 undersea cables connecting it and its outer islands to the world cut multiple times, usually by accidental anchor snags from passing ships.
In response, it has pledged to build its own satellite network, pointing to the crucial utility of reliable networks in conflicts like Ukraine, where the armed forces largely rely on Musk’s Starlink, the world’s dominant low earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet provider.
LEO satellites orbit between 200km and 2,000km above the Earth, often used for communications, sending signals to receiver terminals on the ground. More than half of the thousands of LEO satellites currently active are Starlink. OneWeb, initially a British company before it merged with Eurotel, has launched just a few hundred, the New York Times reported in March.
Starlink is not available in Taiwan after negotiations reportedly fell apart over Taiwan’s requirement that a local entity have a majority share of any joint venture established.
There are also concerns among Taiwanese officials that Musk’s business interests in China and his past remarks on Beijing’s claim over Taiwan could affect the reliability of Starlink supply in the event of a conflict.
Musk’s largest Tesla factory is in China, and in 2023 he drew reproach from Taiwanese officials after he said Taiwan was an integral part of China, akin to Hawaii and the US. It came a few months after he suggested the conflict between China and Taiwan could be resolved if Taiwan just ceded some control to Beijing.
“If the US Department of Defense requires it, Starlink should be able to support Taiwan,” said Dr Shen Ming-Shih, the director of the national security division at Taiwan’s government-backed thinktank, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
“However, if Starlink is unwilling to provide it for considering the Chinese market, Taiwan must have a contingency plan.”
Shen said the provision of Eutelsat OneWeb services to Taiwan was significant, but not enough on its own.
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“The low-orbit satellites assisted by the UK at least make up for Taiwan’s current needs, but they may still be interfered with or interrupted,” he said. “It is important to pursue additional systems, such as undersea cables, low-orbit satellites from other countries, etc.”
Taiwan’s last president, Tsai Ing-wen, pledged almost $10bn (£7.6bn) towards national space industry development, including a domestic satellite internet network. It plans to launch the first of two communications satellites by 2026.
The project is achievable, the chief operating officer of geospatial analysis company, IngeniSPACE, Jason Wang, told the Guardian.
“There’s no question that Taiwan can produce satellites. The question is whether they can do it at scale and send it up into space fast enough,” Wang said.
They also need to be able to replace them quickly, Wang added, in the event they are targeted during a conflict.
“That’s also a question for the commercial players, like OneWeb and others.”
