When Submarine Cables Go Dark: Understanding and Preparing for the Risks of Taiwan's International Internet Disconnection
The study examines the potential impact of large-scale international submarine cable outages on Taiwan's everyday network services. Researchers collected connection data from 2,179 commonly used websites in Taiwan and found that 39.3% are dependent on foreign-hosted resources. These sites have high direct failure risk during cable outages.
Additionally, 49.6% of sites are cloud-dependent, relying on local nodes of multinational public cloud providers or CDNs, but their availability when international connectivity fails remains uncertain. Taiwan is highly digitalized, with fixed broadband household penetration at 74.5% and mobile broadband at 87.12% as of 2024. The economy and society would be significantly affected by any sizable, sustained network outage.
The study highlights the importance of submarine cable resilience in maintaining everyday service availability and broader societal resilience.
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