Chunghwa Telecom Co (CHT, 中華電信) yesterday said it is boosting expenditure on deploying new undersea cables this year to as much as NT$2 billion (US$60.9 million) to meet customer demand, enhance operational resilience, and avert natural disasters and geopolitical risks.
The nation’s biggest telecom plans to install two new submarine cables — Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2) and Apricot — in the first half of this year, Chunghwa Telecom chairman Alex Chien (簡志誠) said yesterday.
The company is also in talks with potential partners to deploy multiple new submarine cables, Chien said.
Photo: Wang Yi-hung, Taipei Times
“As long as those [undersea cables] connect Taiwan to Southeast Asia or Pacific nations, we would be interested in investing,” he said.
The SJC2 submarine cable system spans 10,500km, connecting 11 cable landing stations in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Japan.
Apricot is a 12,000km cable system connecting Japan, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore.
In addition to new cables, the company is also allocating money to repair two damaged domestic undersea cables that connect Taiwan and Lienchiang County (Matsu). The cables were apparently damaged by Chinese ships last month, it said.
The company plans to allocate 25.2 percent more expenditure on the non-mobile segment this year, including the construction of submarine cables to support its business expansion into artificial intelligence (AI) and AI data centers, while spending on the mobile-related segment would shrink 13.3 percent, it added.
Overall, the company plans NT$32.36 billion of capital expenditures this year, up 12.3 percent from NT$28.82 billion last year.
In addition to undersea cables, CHT is mulling introducing more medium Earth orbit satellites and high Earth orbit satellite Internet services this year to help the government and large enterprises to protect their data when submarine cables are damaged, Chien said.
CHT last year inked agreements with OneWeb and SES to provide low and medium Earth orbit satellite services.
Net profit this year is forecast to shrink by 0.3 percent to 3.4 percent to between NT$45.3 billion and NT$46.72 billion compared with last year. Earnings per share would be in the range from NT$4.62 to NT$4.82, the company said.
DRONE CENTRAL: Taiwan aims to become Asia’s democratic hub for drones, with most exports focused on high-quality military-grade models, an official said Taiwan’s drone industry is expected to expand significantly by 2030, producing 100,000 units per month and exporting half of them, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Current drone production capacity is about 15,000 units per month, but the industry can quickly scale up as demand increases, Industrial Development Administration Director-General Chiou Chyou-huey (邱求慧) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s drone output grew 2.5-fold last year to NT$12.9 billion (US$408.3 million) under a government program to develop the uncrewed vehicle sector, he said. The Executive Yuan in October last year approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion into domestic production of uncrewed aerial
WARNING: China should stop engaging in actions that undermine regional peace and stability, as it would only build resentment among people across the Strait, the CGA said China has deployed more than 100 navy, coast guard and other vessels in waters from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea and the western Pacific since US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met in Beijing, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday. “In this part of the world, #China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the #StatusQuo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu wrote on X. In a separate post, he said Beijing was coercing Taiwan’s maritime domain, calling it illegal and provocative, after the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) expelled a
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
More than 8,000 people took part in a rally in Taipei yesterday to express support for more defense spending, after the opposition slashed the Cabinet’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.6 billion) special defense budget and capped it at NT$780 billion. The demonstrators urged the Cabinet to propose another bill. Taiwan Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said the main problem of the passed budget plan is the removal of funding for critical items, not just that the total amount is smaller. Critical budget items included purchasing or developing uncrewed vehicles, Strong Bow (強弓) missile systems, additional ammunition, artificial intelligence-powered combat systems and Taiwan-US
RSS