Taoyuan, Taiwan

Taoyuan, Taiwan: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Taoyuan is a special municipality in northwestern Taiwan, situated along the island's coastline and connected to Taiwan's broader submarine cable network. One submarine cable lands at Taoyuan, linking it to Taiwan's domestic cable infrastructure. That cable, the Taiwan Penghu Kinmen Matsu No.3 (TPKM3), connects Taiwan's main island to its outlying island territories, placing Taoyuan within an intra-national, inter-island corridor rather than an intercontinental one.

As a landing point, Taoyuan represents a domestically oriented node in Taiwan's submarine cable geography. The single cable terminating here serves to bind Taiwan's geographically dispersed island groupings — including Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu — to the main island, a function distinct from the long-distance international cables that characterize other Taiwanese landing points.

Cables Landing at Taoyuan

Taiwan Penghu Kinmen Matsu No.3 (TPKM3) is a 510-kilometre submarine cable that reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2013, with a draft designation noted at that time. The cable connects locations within Taiwan, linking the main island with the outlying island groups of Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu. All endpoints on this cable are within Taiwan, making it a purely domestic inter-island system. At 510 kilometres, it is considerably shorter than the average submarine cable landing in Taiwan, reflecting its regional rather than international scope.

Regional Context

Within Taiwan's 21 landing points, Taoyuan hosts a single submarine cable, placing it in the lower tier of the country's landing point hierarchy by cable count, though still within the top 62 percent of all Taiwanese landing points. By comparison, Toucheng and Tanshui serve as the most heavily connected landing points in Taiwan, with nine and eight cables respectively, while peers such as Dongyin, Dawu, Fangshan, and Huxi Township each host two or more cables. Taoyuan's single-cable profile reflects a focused domestic role rather than the multi-cable international connectivity found at Taiwan's busiest nodes.

Network Role

Taoyuan functions as a single-cable terminus in Taiwan's submarine cable network, anchoring one end of the TPKM3 system and contributing to the domestic connectivity between Taiwan's main island and its outlying island territories of Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu. Its role is specifically intra-national, providing inter-island cable capacity rather than serving any international or intercontinental routing function. The cable landing at Taoyuan does not participate in transoceanic traffic flows, distinguishing it clearly from Taiwan's internationally oriented landing points.

Within the regional submarine cable graph, Taoyuan's presence as a landing point on the main island of Taiwan ensures that the TPKM3 system has a northwestern Taiwanese terminus, complementing the domestic cable architecture that keeps Taiwan's politically and administratively significant outlying islands linked to the main island through dedicated submarine cable infrastructure.