Budai, Taiwan

Budai, Taiwan: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Budai is a landing point located on the coast of Taiwan, serving as a terminus for submarine cable infrastructure connecting the main island of Taiwan with its outlying island territories. One submarine cable lands at Budai, linking it directly into Taiwan's broader network of undersea communications. The cable landing here is oriented toward intra-national connectivity, supporting links between Taiwan's main island and its administered islands rather than intercontinental routes.

Taiwan as a whole hosts 21 submarine cables across 21 landing points, reflecting a mature and distributed coastal cable infrastructure. Budai contributes to this national network as a single-cable terminus, positioned at the more modest end of the country's landing point hierarchy by cable count.

Cables Landing at Budai, Taiwan

The Taiwan Penghu Kinmen Matsu No.2 (TPKM2) cable is the sole submarine cable landing at Budai. With a total length of 467 kilometres, TPKM2 reached ready-for-service status in 2000, making it one of Taiwan's earlier submarine cable deployments. All endpoints on the TPKM2 cable are located within Taiwan, confirming its role as a domestic inter-island system rather than an international link. The cable's name references the island groups it serves - Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu - which are outlying island clusters administered by Taiwan and situated at varying distances from the main island's western and northern coasts.

Regional Context

Among Taiwan's 21 submarine cable landing points, Budai hosts a single cable, placing it in the lower tier of the country's landing point network by cable count, though still within the top 62 percent of all Taiwan landing points. Major hubs such as Toucheng, with nine cables, and Tanshui, with eight cables, handle considerably more cable traffic, while Budai is broadly comparable in scale to single-cable or dual-cable landing points such as Dawu and Fangshan. Its role is therefore specialised rather than aggregative within Taiwan's coastal cable geography.

Network Role

Budai functions as a single-cable terminus dedicated to intra-national inter-island connectivity. Through the TPKM2 cable, it participates in a domestic system designed to maintain communications links between Taiwan's main island and the outlying administered territories of Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu. This positions Budai not as a hub for international traffic, but as a component of Taiwan's internal island-bridging infrastructure, serving a corridor that would otherwise rely entirely on wireless or satellite links.

Within Taiwan's submarine cable graph, Budai represents a specialised node whose single cable serves a geographically defined domestic corridor. The presence of a dedicated landing point at Budai underscores how submarine cable infrastructure in Taiwan extends beyond international connectivity to encompass the physical integration of outlying island communities into the main island's communications network.