Telecommunications giant Chunghwa Telecom Co yesterday held a ceremony to celebrate the completion of its first submarine cable system between Taiwan and China.
Telecommunications companies from both sides of the strait invested a total of NT$200 million (US$6.66 million) to construct the cable system that runs between Taiwan’s Kinmen County and China’s Xiamen City.
Chunghwa Telecom put in NT$100 million, while three major Chinese telecoms companies — China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile — provided the remaining funds.
The submarine system, which took 16 years to build, is the first of its kind and will make it easier to build similar projects, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said at the celebrations.
The government holds the biggest stake in Chunghwa Telecom.
With regard to external telecommunications, cross-strait communications ranks in first place.
With telecommunications demand between the two sides growing rapidly, completion of the cross-strait cable system could not have been more timely, Chunghwa Telecom chairman Lu Shyue-ching (呂學錦) said.
The Kinmen-Xiamen submarine cable project was launched in 1996, after top-ranking officials from Taiwanese and Chinese telecommunications companies held a meeting about the project in Taiwan, Lu said.
The system consists of two cables, one of 11km that runs directly between Kinmen’s Lake Tzu and Xiamen’s Guanyin Mountain, and a 9.7km cable that runs between Kinmen’s Guningtou (古寧頭) and Xiamen’s Dadeng Island (大嶝島), Lu said.
The non-repeater submarine cable system has a bilateral transmission capacity of 90 Gigabits per second (Gbps), with Chunghwa Telecom allocating 90 Gbps bandwidth from the Taiwanese side and the three Chinese companies receiving 30 Gbps each.
Depending on demand, the bandwidth might be expanded in the future, Lu said.
He said the company is building three other cable systems in the region, with the aim of becoming a telecommunications leader in the Asia-Pacific region.
They are the Taiwan Strait Express, another cross-strait submarine cable; the South-East Asia Japan Cable System; and the Asia-Pacific Gateway, which is to link Taiwan, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam, Lu said.
The projects are expected to be completed by the end of 2014, he said.
The Sports Administration yesterday demanded an apology from the national table tennis association for barring 17-year-old Yeh Yi-tian (葉伊恬) from competing in the upcoming World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash tournament in Las Vegas this July. The sports agency said in a statement that the Chinese Taipei Table Tennis Association (CTTTA) must explain to the public why it withdrew Yeh from the WTT tournament in Las Vegas. The sports agency said it contacted the association to express its disapproval of the decision-making process after receiving a complaint from Yeh’s coach, Chuang
Taipei has once again made it to the top 100 in Oxford Economics’ Global Cities Index 2025 report, moving up five places from last year to 60. The annual index, which was published last month, evaluated 1,000 of the most populated metropolises based on five indices — economics, human capital, quality of life, environment and governance. New York maintained its top spot this year, placing first in the economics index thanks to the strength of its vibrant financial industry and economic stability. Taipei ranked 263rd in economics, 44th in human capital, 15th in quality of life, 284th for environment and 75th in governance,
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) tendered his resignation last night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by media. His resignation was immediately accepted by the Control Yuan. In a statement explaining why he had resigned, Lee apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon on May 20. The issue first came to light late last month, when TVBS News reported that Lee had instructed his driver to take the dog to the salon. The news channel broadcast photos that it said were taken by an unnamed whistle-blower, which purportedly showed the