Starlink Moves Closer to Taiwan as Telecommunications Management Act Amendment Advances, Chunghwa Telecom Signals Partnership Interest

What does the core change in the Telecommunications Management Act amendment involve, and what conditions apply?

According to Inside.com.tw, the Legislative Yuan's Transportation Committee has completed a preliminary review of a partial amendment to the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法) that adds an exception mechanism for public telecommunications networks built with satellite communication technology (E1). Under the draft, once the competent authority reviews factors including national security, public network safety, use of telecom resources, and industry development, it may approve such networks without the current restrictions on the chairman's nationality or the foreign shareholding cap (E1).

Those current restrictions are specific: the existing law requires that a public telecom network operator's chairman hold Republic of China nationality, caps direct foreign ownership at 49%, and caps combined direct-and-indirect foreign ownership at 60% (E2). The committee did not pass the exception without conditions — it also approved a supplementary resolution requiring the authority to treat the location of satellite ground stations, data localization and retention, cybersecurity, cooperation obligations for communications interception, and disaster-response communications as key review criteria (E3).

What communication-resilience risks does Taiwan face, and why is satellite communication seen as a solution?

Legislators cited concrete precedent and hypothetical scenarios in pushing the amendment. KMT legislator Huang Chien-hao said that if cross-strait conflict occurred and China cut all of Taiwan's submarine cables, Taiwan would have almost no way to communicate with the outside world (E4). He pointed to recent conflicts — including the Iran-U.S. confrontation, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the early unrest in Iran — where large volumes of information reaching the outside world moved through Starlink satellites, calling this indispensable to a country's communication resilience (E5).

This is not purely hypothetical for Taiwan: in February 2023, two submarine cables connecting Matsu were cut in succession, causing a temporary communications blackout on the islands that required microwave backup links to maintain connectivity for weeks until the cables were repaired (E6).

What is the current state of Chunghwa Telecom's cooperation with satellite operators, and where does Starlink stand?

According to Inside.com.tw, Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信) has already partnered with multiple international low-earth-orbit satellite operators, including Eutelsat OneWeb (formerly OneWeb), to provide emergency communication backup — but Starlink, the world's largest such operator, has not yet been part of that partner list (E7).

That may be changing. Chunghwa Telecom chairman Jie Zhicheng said the company is willing to pursue becoming Starlink's exclusive agent in Taiwan, or even establish a joint venture (E15). Jie added that the company does not rule out any cooperation model and that everything still depends on the other side's willingness (E16). Separately, per a CNYES report, Jie stated that if the Telecommunications Management Act amendment is completed, Chunghwa Telecom will immediately move to bring in Starlink (E18).

What are Starlink's commercial motives and the obstacles to entering Taiwan's market?

Digital Affairs Minister Lin Yi-ching said Starlink had previously told the government it was "not particularly interested" in the Taiwan market (E11). Lin explained that Taiwan's 4G and 5G population coverage rates already exceed 99.9%, leading Starlink to view Taiwan's market as having "limited commercial potential" (E12).

Even if the law changes, obstacles remain. DSET policy analyst Cathy Fang said operators would still need to address spectrum acquisition, ground infrastructure buildout, terminal equipment deployment, cybersecurity, data governance, market size, and commercial viability (E13). Lin Yi-ching characterized the amendment's likely effect precisely: it would remove one important legal barrier, but whether SpaceX ultimately enters the Taiwan market remains a commercial decision for the company itself (E14). The evidence pack also notes that Tesla (特斯拉) CEO Elon Musk (馬斯克) has previously acknowledged restricting certain military uses of Starlink service for Ukraine (E17), a fact raised in discussion of the operator's control over its own network.

Where do ruling and opposition parties agree or differ on the policy goal of the amendment?

KMT legislator Ge Ruzhun said the amendment's goal is to build diversified satellite services, arguing that Taiwan should be able to connect to any satellite constellation because it needs sufficient network connectivity more than most places, to ensure safety, communications security, and national security (E8).

DPP legislator Lin Junxian framed the same amendment differently in emphasis: he stressed that the revision is not about lowering national-security standards, but about giving the government more policy tools to introduce additional communication backup capacity while fully meeting national security requirements (E9). Both legislators support the underlying exception mechanism, though Ge frames it around expanding satellite options and Lin frames it around preserving security standards while adding tools.

What is the legislative timeline, and when might the amendment take effect?

According to Inside.com.tw, the draft amendment has cleared committee-level preliminary review, the step described in the satellite-exception mechanism (E1). However, under current planning, the draft must still go through cross-party negotiation and pass a third reading at the Legislative Yuan's plenary session before it formally takes effect (E10). No date for that plenary vote is included in current reporting.

What this means

The pieces reported here point to a coordinated, but not yet completed, opening. The Transportation Committee has already approved an exception to the 49%/60% foreign-ownership caps and the chairman-nationality rule (E1, E2), paired with a supplementary resolution adding ground-station, data-localization, and cybersecurity review conditions (E3) — a structure that answers both the resilience argument made by Huang Chien-hao and Ge Ruzhun (E4, E5, E8) and the security caution raised by Lin Junxian (E9). Yet the same reporting shows the amendment alone does not guarantee Starlink's arrival: Minister Lin Yi-ching's account of Starlink calling Taiwan's market potential limited, given 99.9%-plus 4G/5G coverage (E11, E12), sits alongside Chairman Jie Zhicheng's stated intent to move immediately once the law passes (E15, E18). Whether that tension resolves in Starlink's favor is, per Lin Yi-ching, a commercial decision that lies with SpaceX itself (E14), and per DSET's Cathy Fang, still contingent on spectrum, ground infrastructure, and other operational hurdles that the law does not by itself remove (E13).