In Taiwan, the government is rushing to do what no other country or company has been able to do: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company.
Starlink has enabled the military, power plants and medical workers to maintain critical online connectivity even when key infrastructure fails during emergencies such as the Tonga earthquake or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Taiwanese officials face constant reminders that their communications infrastructure must be crisis-proof. The island democracy is located 130 miles from China, and its leaders are willing to use force if necessary to assert their claim that Taiwan is part of their territory. It is clearly stated.
Taiwan is subject to regular cyber-attacks, with the recently strengthened People’s Liberation Army intruding into its territorial waters and airspace on an almost daily basis.
And Taiwan’s infrastructure is fragile. Last year, two undersea internet cables in the remote Matsu archipelago off the coast of China were damaged, leaving the internet patchy for several months. These fiber-optic cables, which connect Taiwan to the internet, have suffered about 30 such breaks since 2017, most of them caused by anchors dragged by the many ships sailing through the region.
The war in Ukraine has exacerbated the sense of vulnerability weighing on Taiwan’s leaders. Ukraine’s military has come to rely on systems controlled by Musk after Russian weapons and cyberattacks knocked out many of its communications systems.
“The Ukraine-Russia war has made us deeply reflect,” said Liao Junfang, head of the government-backed Institute of Industrial Technology. “Despite the high cost of construction, in special scenarios the value of having your own constellation is infinite.”
SpaceX dominates the satellite internet industry, and Mr. Musk has long had business in China through his electric car company Tesla, which has large manufacturing operations in Shanghai. Taiwanese authorities decided it was best to build a satellite network that they could control themselves.
But building a network of satellites built, launched and operated in Taiwan will require billions of dollars and years of research and testing.
SpaceX spent five years launching thousands of satellites into so-called low-Earth orbit, about 160 miles above Earth, much closer than traditional communications satellites fly. Satellites transmit signals to terminals on the ground, and the closer the distance, the faster the signal.
Mr. Musk has repeatedly declared that within a few years, his satellite network will cover the entire planet with internet service as fast as that provided on land.
He’s not the only tech billionaire with this goal. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also announced plans to build a network in low Earth orbit. But while SpaceX is responsible for more than half of the active satellites orbiting Earth, Amazon has launched only two.
British company OneWeb has also sent hundreds of satellites into space. But the initiative cost so much money that it had to be bailed out by the British government before merging with European conglomerate Eutelsat to form a company called Eutelsat OneWeb.
Taiwan’s government has said it hopes to send its first communications satellite into orbit by 2026 and a second within two years, while developing four more test satellites. President Tsai Ing-wen has pledged $1.3 billion to Taiwan’s space program to develop the best of these experiments into a satellite internet network built and controlled entirely in Taiwan.
While the network was being developed, the Taiwanese government brokered a deal for access to the existing satellite network. The plan is to deploy 700 terminals that can receive satellite signals. In August, it partnered with Luxembourg company SES, and in November, Chunghwa Telecom announced a partnership with Eutelsat OneWeb. The partnership could provide multiple layers of backup even after Taiwan launches its own network.
“We need to invest in multiple systems,” said Yisuo Tseng, a researcher at the Institute for Defense and Security Research, a think tank funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense. “He can’t put all his eggs in one basket.”
More than 40 Taiwanese companies are manufacturing parts in the satellite supply chain, said Liao of the Institute of Industrial Technology.
The Taiwan-made satellite network does more than just provide Taiwan with an alternative communication system. This could establish Taiwan as a major technology producer for years to come, just as Taiwan is the source of most of the world’s advanced semiconductors.
“Currently, we are strong in semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, but space is a new industry that can take advantage of that,” said Yu Jiu Wang, founder of Tron Future, a startup that will provide payloads for one of the government’s satellites. says Mr. It’s being tested.
One of the challenges facing Taiwan is the cost of rockets to launch satellites. Most rockets can only be used once and require enormous amounts of fuel, making them too expensive for all but the wealthiest governments to experiment with.
All of Taiwan’s satellites that went into space from 2005 to 2016 were launched in the United States, said Jensen, founder of the rocket launch company TiSpace and who worked for more than a decade at the Taiwan Space Administration, the predecessor of the Taiwan Space Administration. Mr. Chen said.
In the past year, Taiwanese research and weather satellites have been launched by France’s Arianespace and SpaceX.
Perhaps no company has devoted more resources to rocket development than SpaceX.
It has become so inevitable that it sends competitors’ payloads into space. Bezos’ project announced in December that some of the satellites would be launched on three future Falcon 9 launches.
Taipei has been exploring ways to acquire satellite internet technology since 2018, including talks with SpaceX. But Musk balked at the requirement that foreign companies involved in telecoms infrastructure be joint ventures with local partners who hold a majority stake. Hsu Chi-shan, a research fellow at the Defense Security Institute, said Mr Musk considered this “totally unacceptable”. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Those talks did not result in a partnership with SpaceX.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said last month that by not making Starlink available in Taiwan, SpaceX would not allow U.S. governments around the world to access the service, according to a letter seen by the New York Times. He argued that this could violate the contract to do so. .
The company responded that SpaceX is complying with all U.S. government contracts. In the post of X.
When asked about the prospects for cooperation with SpaceX, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital said in an emailed statement that it is open to working with any satellite operator as long as the operator “complies with Taiwan’s national security and national security.” We will evaluate the possibility of cooperation.” Information security regulations. ”
Musk’s deep business ties in China have also raised concerns in Taiwan. China is Tesla’s largest market outside the United States.
The Chinese government eased long-standing restrictions on foreign ownership of companies and provided lucrative incentives for Tesla before it set up the Shanghai Gigafactory. He has also made comments supporting the Chinese Communist Party’s position on Taiwan.
“What happens if we decide to cut jobs because of pressure from China because we rely on Starlink and Mr. Musk is putting the Chinese market at risk?” asked Tseng of the defense think tank. “We need to consider that.”
audio creator Adrian Hirst.
