The Coast Guard Administration yesterday opened a satellite link connecting the coast guard base on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) to Taiwan proper in a boost to the nation’s foothold in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島).
Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) wrote on Facebook that the activation of the SES O3b mPower, a medium Earth orbit satellite system, was a goalpost for sustaining the coast guard, research and medical personnel who are stationed on the island.
The coast guard would next establish communications with the Taiwanese outpost on Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島), Kuan said.
Photo: Screen grab from Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling’s Facebook page
In August last year, Taiwan Statebuilding Party members said that coast guard personnel on Taiping were so poorly equipped when it came to communications that they had resorted to using Chinese cellphones to call home, sparking a public furor.
Taiping, the largest of the Spratly Islands, is 1,600km from Taiwan proper, while Pratas lies 444km from the Port of Kaohsiung, distances too great to justify undersea cables, which presents a unique challenge for the personnel posted on the islands, Kuan said.
The Coast Guard Administration acquired the services of the O3b mPower system through the Ministry of Digital Affairs’ National Digital Resilience Program, which seeks to harden Taiwanese communications infrastructure, she said.
Taiping serves as Taiwan’s international technology technological research cooperation hub, and a base for humanitarian search-and-rescue operations throughout the South China Sea, missions that require robust communications, Kuan said.
The more robust communications capabilities installed on Taiping would allow the island to boost its role to what the government envisioned it to be, she said.
Coast guard personnel assigned to Taiping have reported that the O3b mPower system’s performance is satisfactory, Kuan added.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS