Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s biggest telecom operator, yesterday said it plans to invest up to US$115 million in US geosynchronous orbit operator Astranis Space Technologies Corp, the latest in a slew of efforts to boost network resilience.
The telecom’s remarks came after its board of directors approved a satellite investment program yesterday, a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
No further details were disclosed.
Photo: Taipei Times file photo
Chunghwa Telecom is stepping up efforts to bolster its network resilience against geopolitical risks and natural disasters through investing in more submarine cables, microwave transmission devices and satellites.
“What we can do is prevent the communications network from disruptions,” Chunghwa Telecom chairman Alex Chien (簡志誠) told the Taipei Times in February in response to a question on how the company would cope with intensifying geopolitical tensions.
“We have been boosting safety resilience to hinder natural and human-made disasters [from disrupting networks]. That is why we are investing in so many undersea cables and 40 to 50 microwave transmission systems on the mountains,” he said.
The company aims to secure more satellite bandwidth to cope with demand from private businesses and the government to connect with overseas units, Chien said at the time.
Satellite communications would be a good backup in case undersea cables were damaged, although it would be unexpected, he said.
Astranis, based in San Francisco, builds and operates small and low-cost telecommunications satellites. The company’s first product, dubbed MicroGEO, operates in geostationary orbit and can provide dedicated service to entire nations and commercial partners alike with a single satellite, the company said on its Web site.
Astranis has commitments for more than US$1 billion of satellite services across 12 MicroGEO satellites and operates five satellites on orbit today, it says.
The collaboration with Astranis would complete the last piece in Chunghwa Telecom’s deployment in satellite communicants. The company offers low Earth orbit satellite services in Taiwan through London-based Eutelsat OneWeb and medium Earth orbit satellite services from SES of Luxembourg. Before that, it started collaborating with Singapore Telecom Ltd in developing a new high Earth orbit satellite by investing 177 million euros (US$193.74 million) after jointly launching two satellites.
Chunghwa Telecom is reportedly exploring partnerships with Amazon.com’s Project Kuiper to offer satellite services in Taiwan.
Chunghwa Telecom expects its satellite services to contribute more than NT$1 billion (US$30.3 million) in revenue this year, compared with about NT$700 million last year.
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