Taiwan is courting investors to help it establish its own satellite communications provider, inspired by the role Elon Musk’s Starlink has played in the war in Ukraine, as Taipei boosts efforts to fortify itself against a potential assault from China. Taiwan is in preliminary talks with several domestic and international investors to raise funds for the project, which the country’s space agency, known as TASA, wants to spin out of an existing satellite division, according to three people familiar with the situation.
(…)
Since an LEO constellation needed between 120 and 150 satellites to ensure coverage of a location, countries aspiring to the sector needed to come up with financial support to kick-start a rapid prototyping cycle, Wu added. TASA is trying to do just that. The agency’s LEO project is working with Taiwanese start-ups such as Tron Future Tech and Rapidtek to develop specialised phased array antennas and transmitters. Taipei also remains open to working with other providers as it races to get off the ground. “The vision [is] not to tie ourselves to any particular satellite provider,” Tang said. “We want to work with as many of them concurrently — that’s resilience.”