Also, usually municipal and local city governments have more say over the day-to-day operation of the industry players there.

Maybe local governments, municipal governments. Sometimes when the central government does something, but with a limited budget, like rewarding childbirth, the municipal governments are the ones that are actually doubling down on the subsidy, because they also want to make a difference compared to other municipal governments. That is an ...

In the future, when OneWeb or Starlink can be used in Taiwan, we will make the connection, instead of just waiting. If we wait, the momentum will disappear.

But the use of Starlink and OneWeb outside of Taiwan cannot be serviced by the universal service fund at this moment, because OneWeb and Starlink aren’t even Taiwanese telecommunication providers in the first place. So now there is this gap, and it’s faster to close in on this gap from ...

It’s not that easy at this stage. Although we worked hard to include data services and other things, but this must be limited to the domestic Taiwanese users. Can it be expanded in the future? It is possible to have a discussion on it.

Because Bruce Cheng told me before that the universal service is extended outside of Taiwan and provided to non-Taiwanese people.

It should be okay. The advantage of this path is that that particular service can be separated from the main universal service within Taiwan.

After reaching the first step, how do we tell the public? Or we can tell the fishery department that our opinion is this, and they can take it and tell that to the public. Once we have those two, then it’ll be easy afterwards.

So, we don’t necessarily need to communicate with them. We can contact them first. Let them know that we have seen you. You have mentioned the use of 12 nautical miles. We also want to know what they were thinking they expressed their own opinion. Then we can reach an ...

I think that’s one thing we can definitely do. We can make use of domestic telecommunications regulations, which gives us the right to express our opinion.

Yes, fishers are setting good examples. It’s so important. And I see already that they have subsidies for the good examples.But we need to extend the affordability and reach so that even the not currently participating vessel owners find no excuse for not participating. I think that is the intermediate ...

Any final…?

Yeah. “If you blow the whisle, I’ll switch you off.”

Exactly. And then, just one of the crew buys an expensive new phone and shares it with others, like I shared it with you. And that’s it, and that is maybe three years down the line. So, we must not lose momentum. But we must also be clear about the ...

And once that happens, you don’t have to learn anything new anymore.

And third point is that in the next few years, it will be part of the phone. So, iPhone 14 already has the way to connect to satellites. Android 14 soon will have that capability. Within a couple of years, if you don’t insist on very high bandwidth video, and ...

Second point, I think currently the terminals are smaller and smaller, and so you mentioned it’s difficult for a phisher to install and to operate. But for many, this is already so small that it is just a laptop size or even smaller, like a small tablet. And so just ...

So what I was talking about was controlling the terminal should go to the workers meaningfully in an ideal world. From my point of view, the vessel owner operating the hotspot is an acceptable intermediate solution. But because if they have access to OneWeb or Starlink terminals, then they may ...

Yes. So, I mean, we can talk about the subsidy/universal service equation in a separate conversation, because these are orthogonal, right?

So technically, there is no way to prevent someone who shares Wi-Fi with you from meddling with your Internet quality. But if you own the terminal, then you can ensure private communication all the way, and you control how much bandwidth to use.

It’s just like using Internet in a cafe. The cafe owner may not have the best interest to show you a lot of advertisement or whatever, pop-up ads and so on. But some cafe owners do that anyway, and I don’t attend those cafes anymore.

And when the Wi-Fi hotspot is controlled by the vessel owner—rate limiting; switching it off; you connect to this website, you get good bandwidth; connect to that website, you get bad bandwidth—all these may not be in the vessel owner’s best interest, but they actually have the means to do ...

Yes. No, the reason why I mentioned last meeting about a worker-owned satellite low-earth orbit terminal is not because I think the vessel owner or government should shift away from the subsidy. That’s not what I mean. What I mean was because you asked specifically about privacy of communication.

It’s as I said last time. So that’s why it’s important to ask if anyone, whether it’s the ship owners or the fishermen, is already using it. Once there is an established fact, it would be easier for both government agencies to have a discussion.

That’s what ship owners are afraid of, to have the two sides say different things. One says you can turn it on, and other says to shut it down.

I think we need to contact the person who worded the regulations. So we need to contact him first, to know the intentions behind the words he wrote. But after we know his intention, I can say at least that we don’t want to expand on the interpretation of those ...

I wonder if some of our embassies use low-earth orbit satellites, too?

We understand that. As we’ve mentioned earlier, we have some partners who have already tested the satellites abroad. They are also from the Republic of China. So of course, if it’s illegal to use Starlink outside of Taiwan, then all these people would be breaking the law. But if they ...

We will need to work with FA to understand what they mean by “using satellite services” and “domestic telecommunications law”. Right? Like these words.

As I read it, the FA does not impose extra restrictions on the satellite use on the backhaul. So it falls to the Telecommunication Act competent authority to tell the FA or the vessel owners whether that is legal or not. It just happens that DG is responsible for that ...

But with the same guideline, they say that the satellite part is outside of their purview. This guideline talks about the Wi-Fi sharing part. For the Wi-Fi part, the only wording in the guideline is that the satellite service they use is compliant with the federal communication laws. That’s it.

The FA I already sent to DG already has the Wi-Fi rules that they passed, which you quoted as taking in a weekly five minutes, which I will not comment.

So it doesn’t matter anymore?

If the ship owners sail out beyond 12 nautical miles and turn Starlink on, is that something that would fall under the jurisdiction of our Telecommunications Management Act, something that is punishable by that?

Medium-orbit is more expensive. We’ve been testing it for a period of time. Because it’s so new, so we called it a proof of concept before the end of next year we registered. We’re not sure if it can provide a quality service. For companies like OneWeb, we’ll collaborate with ...

So maybe DG can answer.

So we’re in contact with not just SES, but also the lower earth orbit, the more affordable ones that I just showed you, the OneWeb and Starlink.

Now, the Starlink question, D.G. will answer. As I understand, we are already testing not just one way in the northern Taiwan or in Taiping Island, but also we’re working with other jurisdictions to test Starlink as part of our emergency resilience plan.

We need a creative interpretation for all three to extend it to migrant workers working on a vessel that is operating outside of our jurisdiction.

Because at 1,000 or 1,500, this is very affordable for a pool of workers on a vessel to buy a terminal to share with you. But then whether that qualifies for universal service fund subsidy, that’s another matter altogether. Because we talked about it last time, that it covers indispensable ...

Just two points. In our previous meeting, I did actually bring up the alternate point, which is not waiting for the vessel owner, but rather for the fishermen in this vessel just purchase a Starlink terminal in the future and for that worker to share.

So, as you can see, this is the coverage of OneWeb. Each white dot is a star. And this is Starlink. Starlink is obviously, at the moment, much denser. One way of, in our jurisdiction, there’s only this amount of satellite, so it will take until the end of the ...

That’s a great question. And also, if it’s allowed, or once it’s allowed, can we provide it as part of universal service? This is for D.G. to answer.

Exactly. Anything except for live video should be able.

Which is very low.

Okay, but how did he know that it works on multiple models?

So, the Starlink hotspot that they have, is it already shared with the workers on the vessel?

So it actually, in a roaming mode, works in Taiwan?

Does it work?

Thank you so much for your explanation.