Taiwan worried about threat of China sabotaging undersea Internet wires

MATSU: The undersea internet cables serve the Matsu island chain, part of Taiwan, but at points, which are only a few miles from China, internet outage is not unusual. The cause of Matsu’s internet outage is familiar: Chinese fishing boats, so omnipresent that the nightly glow of their green lights has become known as the islands’ own aurora borealis, the Washington Post reported.

Wayward anchors and trawling nets have taken out the islands’ two internet cables 27 times in the past five years. But this is the first time Matsu has faced such a long outage, as one of the world’s few dozen repair ships won’t be available to fix the breaks until the end of April. The first cable was damaged on February 2 by a Chinese fishing boat and the second, on Feb 8 by a Chinese cargo ship, according to Taiwanese authorities, the Washington Post reported.

This plunged residents back in time and forced them to confront what life would be like if increasing tensions with China made Taiwan’s internet infrastructure an intentional target.

Tensions have flared in recent months following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August.

Taiwan’s military maintains a major presence in Matsu. On a recent night people in fatigue jogged around Nangan harbour and played basketball outside the Matsu islands’ only Coffee shop.

There is no evidence that the cables were severed intentionally, according to Chunghwa Telecom. But analysts and local officials have said the frequent cable breaks caused by Chinese vessels amount to purposeful harassment that keeps Taiwan’s government and telecom companies scrambling to provide basic services.

“What happened in Matsu can be seen as a warning signal,” said Wen Lii, the head of the local chapter of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

“If an internet outage could happen for Matsu, the same thing could happen for Taiwan, what would we do if Taiwan’s 14 international undersea cables were damaged?” Lii added.

The Matsu island chain was on the front line of fighting during the Chinese civil war in the 1940s and its closest island is just six miles off the coast of China’s Fujian province. The islands, home to about 14,000 people, depend heavily on tourists drawn to the quiet, once heavily fortified beaches where bunkers have become hip cafes and guesthouses.

But without the internet, businesses have slowed to a trickle. Half a dozen hotel and restaurant owners said that the ongoing outage meant their business was down at least 50 per cent compared with the same time last year, Washington Post reported.

“At its worst point, the phone barely rang at all, and the calls that did get through were full of noise,” said Wang Yuan-song, who owns a hotel near the airport on Beigan, one of the Matsu islands. “There was no way to communicate normally.”

After a shorter outage put his business on hold last April, Wang was prepared for this one. He had friends on Taiwan’s main island send him prepaid mobile SIM cards, then put the cards into his own internet routers to make shareable WiFi hotspots for guests. The weak signal was barely usable but better than nothing, he said.

Chunghwa Telecom has set up a high-powered microwave radio transmission from towers near Taipei to provide a backup signal for online banking and other basic services for Matsu residents, but the service is intermittent and slows to a crawl during peak use. (IANS)

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