The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday approved Chunghwa Telecom’s proposed construction of a marine cable between Taiwan’s outlying island of Kinmen and Xiamen, a major city in Fujian Province, China.
The nation’s first direct cross-strait marine cable will be jointly funded by Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Telecom and Far EasTone Telecommunications, as well as Chinese telecoms operators China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.
Chunghwa applied to build the marine cable on behalf of the nation’s two other telecoms operators and signed the contract with the Chinese telecoms operators. Based on the contract, each side will invest 50 percent in the deal.
The cable is scheduled to become operational in March, and it is expected to cost an estimated NT$1 billion (US$33 million) to lay.
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said the marine cable would be an international cable no different from the other international cables Chunghwa already uses.
He said construction of the marine cable did not violate regulations banning Chinese investment in Taiwanese first-tier telecoms operators.
To dismiss national security concerns, Chen said the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, the National Police Agency of the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Bureau had also given their approval.
Chen said Taiwanese telecoms operators said they would not use any communications equipment manufactured in China.
“The direct marine cable could reduce the costs of cross-strait communication and help increase cross-strait communication volume as well,” Chen said.
Chunghwa said the new marine cable would help -increase the -overall reliability of -communications services.
Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific Telecom was fined NT$300,000 for installing fixed-network communications equipment without securing a permit from the NCC.
Although the equipment had yet to become operational, the company had violated the Telecommunication Act (電信法), officials said.
Chen said the company was fined because it had not secured a permit to install new communications equipment, not because it used equipment manufactured by China-based Huawei Technology Inc.
Aside from the fine, Chen said the company would be a given notice to comply with government regulations within a prescribed timeframe, based on Article 63 of the act. Article 63 also stipulates that failure to comply within the prescribed timeframe could result in consecutive fines until full compliance or an annulment of its franchise.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000