European satellite firm SES is to place a ground station in Taiwan in partnership with local telco Chunghwa.

Chunghwa has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SES to establish North Asia’s first MEO O3b mPower ground station in Taiwan.

The company said the new gateway will increase satellite data transmission capacity and service performance. Details on where the antenna would be located were not shared.

Jia Chung-Yung, president of Chunghwa Telecom’s network technology group, said: “Chunghwa Telecom continues to integrate diverse communication resources across sea, land, space, and air to build a new-generation network architecture that combines high resilience with technological innovation. Going forward, we will further expand our satellite communications deployment, promote diversified services and application innovation, and actively invest in the development of next-generation communications technologies. At the same time, we remain committed to our ESG sustainability goals, laying a solid long-term foundation for Taiwan’s communications resilience.”

Founded in 1996, Chunghwa Telecom’s largest investor is the Taiwan government. The company has two earth station sites, located in Taipei and Fang-Shan.

The telco operates one geostationary satellite alongside Singtel, the ST-2, and is sourcing a second from microGEO firm Astranis. The company has also signed a low Earth orbit capacity deal with Eutelsat’s OneWeb.

SES’ O3b mPower fleet was originally announced in 2017 and launched services in 2024. Set to total 13 satellites, each 1,700kg Ka-band unit can provide up to 5,000 beams per satellite, providing from 50Mbps up to 10Gbps.

SES' nearest ground station to Taiwan is currently located at the Hong Kong Earth Station in Stanley Fort.