Cable Landing Stations in Taiwan

The east and south coast of Taiwan island is of significant importance for the submarine networks, and is also a high-risk region for the submarine networks due to the characteristics of the geology of Taiwan.

There are now 9 submarine cables landing in Taiwan, including APCN, APCN-2, C2C, China-US CN, EAC, FLAG FEA, FNAL/FNAL, SMW3 and TPE, with cable landing stations at Tanshui, Pali, Toucheng and Fangshan.

On the other hand, the east and south of Taiwan are a complex system of belts formed by, and part of the zone of, active collision between the North Luzon Trough portion of the Luzon Volcanic Arc and South China, where accreted portions of the Luzon Arc and Luzon forearc form the eastern Coastal Range and parallel inland Longitudinal Valley of Taiwan respectively. This region is encountered frequent seismic faults which may caused serious harmful impact to the submarine networks. For example, the magnitude 7.0 Hengchun Earthquake in December 2006 resulted in 18 cable cuts in 8 submarine cable systems, atastrophically disrupted Internet services in Asia and Pan-Pacific regions.

In view of the impacts on submarine networks by the seismic faults in the south and east coast of Taiwan, the industry has worked and will continue to work on alternative routes for cables going through the region. For example, TGN Intra-Asia and AAG submarine cable systems have been deployed to go southward to avoid the earthquake belt, and the undergoing TSE-1 cable is going to connect Taiwan and Mainland China directly across the Taiwan Strait.

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