Taiwan plans for Ukraine-style back-up satellite tv for pc Web community amid danger of conflict

When Russian forces knocked the Ukrainian metropolis of Irpin offline in March, Tesla chief Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite tv for pc Web service got here to the rescue.

In simply two days, the town – whose energy traces and mobile and Web networks had been broken or destroyed – was again on-line, and residents might instantly get in contact with family members, in keeping with experiences.

Now, Taiwan – ever contending with the possibility of a Chinese invasion – is taking a leaf out of that handbook by establishing an analogous back-up satellite tv for pc Web community.

“The expertise of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… confirmed that the entire world can know what is occurring there in actual time,” stated Taiwan’s Digital Minister Audrey Tang in current media interviews, conveying plans to construct “digital resilience for all” in Taiwan.

Over the subsequent two years, the island is ready to trial a NT$550 million (S$24.67 million) satellite tv for pc programme that goals to maintain Taiwan’s command techniques working if typical connections get reduce, Ms Tang stated.

A number of Taiwan firms are actually in discussions with worldwide satellite tv for pc service suppliers, she added, with out offering particulars.

New satellite tv for pc Web companies equivalent to these provided by Starlink depend on a constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites orbiting at an altitude of 550km that may beam the Web into even essentially the most distant places from house.

Presently, worldwide Web visitors is generally carried by way of fibre-optic cables lining the ocean flooring.

Taiwan is linked to the world through 15 submarine knowledge cables.

“The Web utilized in Taiwan depends closely on undersea cables, so if (attackers) reduce off all of the cables, they’d reduce off the entire Web there,” Dr Lennon Chang, a cyber-security researcher at Monash College, informed The Straits Occasions.

“It is smart for the federal government to have different types of communication prepared for emergency conditions,” he added.

Taiwan’s satellite tv for pc trial programme comes amid hovering cross-strait tensions, which reached new heights in current weeks within the wake of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in August. China, which views self-governing Taiwan as its personal territory, deemed her journey an infringement of its personal sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Beijing has by no means renounced the usage of drive to carry Taiwan underneath its management, and responded to the go to by launching a collection of unprecedented army workout routines, together with the firing of ballistic missiles over the island.

Already, some analysts say that issues over Taiwan’s community vulnerabilities are very actual.