Magong, Taiwan

Magong, Taiwan: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Magong is a county-administered city and the seat of Penghu County, situated on Penghu's main island off the western coast of Taiwan. As a landing point for submarine cable infrastructure, Magong serves the Penghu archipelago's connectivity requirements through its connection to Taiwan's broader cable network. One submarine cable lands at Magong, linking the islands to Taiwan's mainland telecommunications grid.

The single cable serving Magong, the Taiwan Penghu Kinmen Matsu No.3 (TPKM3), reflects the domestic connectivity priorities of Taiwan's outlying island groups. Rather than connecting to foreign shores, this cable operates entirely within Taiwan, reinforcing inter-island links across the Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu island groups. The corridor it enables is thus an intra-national one, providing dedicated submarine capacity between Taiwan's offshore administrative territories and the main island.

Cables Landing at Magong

Taiwan Penghu Kinmen Matsu No.3 (TPKM3) is a 510-kilometre submarine cable that reached ready-for-service status in 2013, with a draft designation indicating it was in a planning or pre-operational phase at that stage. The cable connects landing points entirely within Taiwan, serving the outlying island groups of Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu alongside the main island. Magong, as the administrative centre of Penghu County, is among the termination points on this domestic route. No other countries are served by this cable.

Regional Context

Within Taiwan's submarine cable landscape, Magong ranks among the smaller landing points by cable count. Taiwan hosts 21 submarine cables across 21 landing points, with major hubs such as Toucheng serving nine cables and Tanshui serving eight. Magong's single cable places it in the lower tier of Taiwan's landing point hierarchy, though it fulfils a distinct domestic role supporting the Penghu island group rather than serving international traffic.

Network Role

Magong functions as a single-cable terminus in Taiwan's submarine cable graph, oriented entirely toward domestic inter-island connectivity rather than international routing. The TPKM3 cable it hosts addresses the particular challenge of linking Taiwan's dispersed offshore island groups — Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu — to the main island via a dedicated submarine route of 510 kilometres. This places Magong in a different category from Taiwan's internationally connected landing points, whose cables span average distances well exceeding 7,000 kilometres.

The presence of a purpose-built domestic cable at Magong, rather than reliance on international trunk routes, illustrates how island-group connectivity within Taiwan requires its own discrete submarine infrastructure. In the regional submarine cable graph, Magong represents a node that ensures the Penghu archipelago maintains a direct, undersea link to Taiwan's main telecommunications network.