The first submarine cable directly linking Taiwan and China was completed on Friday, with the telecommunications operators who built it expecting it to improve cross-strait telecommunications quality and to cut communications costs.
The Taiwan Strait Express-1, which links Fuzhou in China’s Fujian Province with Tamsui in northern Taiwan, is 270km long.
Builders adopted state-of-the-art fiber-optic technology for the system and routed it in a way that avoids the faultline region, to minimize the risks of possible damage from natural disasters such as earthquakes.
In future, communications between Taiwan and China will no longer have to be rerouted via the Asia-Euro Under-sea Optical Cable, the China-US Cable Network or the Asia Pacific Cable Network 2.
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait witnessed the completion of the system through a video hookup.
Douglas Hsu (徐旭東), chairman of Taiwan’s Far EasTone, said that the completion of the system will make cross-strait communications faster and more stable, and create a win-win situation for operators and users.
Telecoms operators suggested this was just the beginning of further cooperation between Taiwan and China in the sector.
Taiwan Mobile chairman Richard Tsai (蔡明興) said the system will provide a faster and higher-quality service for Taiwanese businessmen operating in China.
“Taiwan Mobile is planning further cooperation with China’s telecommunications operators on cloud computing services to tap into the vast business opportunities in digital convergence,” Tsai said.
China Mobile chief executive officer Li Yue (李躍) said that the latest system will not only upgrade the quality of cross-strait communications, but will also save costs for operators.
The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts yesterday apologized for forbidding children from copying paintings by freehand drawing, saying it welcomes visitors to make sketches of paintings on drawing tablets or sketchpads. The museum issued the remark after a museumgoer nicknamed “Mickeyelk Gesner” on Thursday posted on Facebook that her son had been sketching a painting by Pablo Picasso on a tablet computer at the exhibition “Capturing the Moment” on Wednesday when a museum worker told him to stop drawing. “The staff told us, ‘Only taking photos is allowed. No copying. This is a rule,’” she quoted the worker as saying. Physician Lee Chia-yan
The number of foreign students attending Taiwanese universities last year dropped 9.46 percent from 2019, mainly due to a marked decline in the number of Chinese students, the National Audit Office said in a report. Last year, there were 116,038 foreign students — 67,299 degree students and 48,739 non-degree students — a decrease of 12,119, or 9.46 percent, from 128,157 in 2019, the report said. China in 2020 stopped allowing Chinese students to study in Taiwan, saying that COVID-19 pandemic controls and “the cross-strait situation” were the reasons for the change. Chinese who had already come to Taiwan were allowed finish their
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 5:06pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The earthquake occurred offshore, 38.3km south-southeast of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 9km, CWA data showed. The quake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, was highest in parts of Yilan County, where it measured a “weak 5” on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale. The temblor recorded an intensity of 4 in parts of Hualien, Taoyuan and New Taipei, and 3 in parts of Taichung, Nantou, Taipei, Hsinchu and Miaoli, CWA data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage
HUGE UPGRADE: Once Terminal 3 is completed, the airport’s passenger service capacity would expand to 82 million travelers per year from 37 million, an official said The north concourse of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal 3 is scheduled to begin operations in the middle of next year, Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) said yesterday. The Terminal 3 project was launched as the number of air travelers accessing the nation’s largest international airport each year has already exceeded the combined capacity of terminals 1 and 2. The two existing terminals were designed to be accessed by 37 million air travelers per year. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, about 48.36 million accessed the airport in 2019. The airport operator yesterday organized a field trip for reporters to see Terminal 3 construction