The Taiwanese government is preparing to construct an Internet cable terminal in Tainan and install two more undersea cables to increase telecommunications resiliency, according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In separate incidents that are believed to have involved a Chinese trawler and a cargo ship in early February, two subsea Internet cables that connect Lienchiang County to Taiwan’s main island were severed.
According to the source, Taiwan’s submarine cables are unevenly spread, favoring the northern part of the country. Three landing points are in Yilan County’s Toucheng Township, New Taipei City’s Bali and Tamsui districts, and the fourth is in Pingtung County’s Fangshan Township.
Southern Taiwan entirely depends on the three cables ending in Fangshan, they said.
To increase redundancy and security, the National Science Council reportedly instructed the National Center for High-Performance Computing to plan a cloud server hub and Internet cable landing point in Tainan as well as a backup auxiliary node in Taichung.
They added that private-sector organizations have shown interest and that the project is expected to be finished by 2025.
Additionally, they stated that the Southeast Asia-Japan 2 submarine cable system, which connects Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, is anticipated to be finished by the end of this year.
They added that the operators chose to put up two landing places so that Taiwan wouldn’t be cut off from the system in the event that one of them failed. The system has landing ports in Tamsui and Fangshan.
In addition, they also added, the Apricot undersea cable has been relocated to avoid the Philippines and Indonesia in order to increase its security before it launches late next year.
According to them, Taiwan is connected to other countries by 14 submarine cables, and the administration is aware that China might try to attack them.
