The incident raises concern China will try to cut all undersea cables to Taiwan in the event of a military invasion, so Taiwan is racing to develop a satellite-based internet service.

Taiwan has accused a Chinese-owned ship of severing a critical data cable off its northern coast on Friday. Officials in Taipei discovered that four cores of an international submarine cable, which transmits data to America’s AT&T, were left ruptured early on Jan 3.

In 2023, the outlying Matsu Islands, within view of the Chinese coast, endured patchy internet for months after two undersea internet cables broke. These fiber optic cables that connect Taiwan to the internet suffered about 30 such breaks between 2017 and 2023.

Taiwan's coast guard has said that it suspects a ship damaged an undersea communications cable over the weekend, but that bad weather prevented its personnel from boarding the vessel to investigate. The coast guard had said on Saturday that a ship registered both to Cameroon and Tanzania was suspected of damaging an undersea communications cable northeast of the island.

A subsea power link and four data cables were damaged December 25, after Eagle S sailed over them on the Gulf of Finland.

The telecommunications cable connecting Taiwan to the mainland has been cut. Due to bad weather, a suspected vessel, a tanker under the Cameroonian flag, could not be detained and continued its journey to South Korea.

The telecommunications cable connecting Taiwan to the mainland has been severed. Due to adverse weather, a suspected vessel—a tanker flying under the Cameroonian flag—could not be detained and continued its journey to South Korea.