APAC’s Starlink: Taiwan Proposes Regional LEO Collaboration

Sovereign low-Earth orbit (LEO): everyone wants it, but few have the means to attain it. Discussions about combining efforts for an Asia-Pacific LEO constellation have been happening behind closed doors for some time. That conversation is entering the public view as nations consider a regional alternative to Starlink.

At the 41st Space Symposium in April, Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) Director General Dr. Jong-Shinn Wu proposed a “cross-border communication constellation” among “four to six or even more like-minded countries.” The approach would provide a “regional, different capability” to that of Starlink, Amazon Leo or IRIS², while spreading costs and technological development across multiple nations. Collaboration, according to Wu, would improve regional security and reduce the burden of any one nation building a standalone constellation.

“We have been in ongoing discussions with a number of countries, as well as with investors and private-sector companies,” Wu told Constellations. “Interest has been growing steadily, particularly as many stakeholders recognize the increasing importance of resilient communications infrastructure and regional cooperation.”

Though the emphasis is on LEO, Wu told Constellations that a multi-orbit architecture is “within the scope of consideration,” subject to mission requirements and cost efficiency.

Taiwan is pushing ahead with regional collaboration even as it develops the Beyond 5G (B5G) national communications constellation and explores telco partnerships with OneWeb, Amazon Leo and others. As Wu emphasized at Space Symposium, Taiwan is weighing “geopolitical pressure from China” in diversifying access to space-based connectivity. “For many nations, space is about exploration, about reaching the stars in the universe. But for Taiwan, space is about survival of democracy of a nation,” he said.

Resilient Pathways: Sovereign, Commercial and Regional

Taiwan’s all-of-the-above connectivity strategy reflects a broader trend in the region and globally. Nations are simultaneously pursuing sovereign space capabilities and building out commercial partnerships, while regional discussions occur in the background.

Japan has announced an integrated national security constellation, led by the recently formed Tri-Sat Constellation Co. joint-venture company, as well as a 2027 optical wireless communications demonstration between LEO and high-altitude platform stations (HAPS). At the same time, the country’s telcos have deepened ties with OneWeb and Starlink for satellite broadband and direct-to-device (D2D).

Korean telcos have established partnerships with OneWeb and Starlink for home, enterprise and maritime connectivity, while the government is investing 320 billion won ($234.3 million) into the sovereign K-LEO constellation. The first two K-LEO satellites are scheduled to launch in 2030 to demonstrate secure military links and 6G integration. One satellite is being developed by Hanwha Systems in collaboration with MDA Space and Telesat, with an emphasis on global commercial compatibility. The second will be a fully sovereign design led by Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) featuring indigenous capabilities.

“We are determined to support Korea’s sovereign LEO constellation initiative, while also exploring opportunities for regional collaboration,” said Hyunsang (Sean) Yim, global business lead at Hanwha Systems.

While supporting both approaches, Yim explained that there are tradeoffs with each. “A sovereign constellation provides clear advantages in terms of national security, data control and assured access. However, the challenges are equally significant,” he said. Specifically, Yim cited high upfront investment costs and limited economies of scale in developing a standalone constellation.

Regional collaboration can offer a “compelling alternative” for like-minded nations to pool resources, he continued. This improves cost and interoperability, but it comes with governance complexity, issues around data sharing, security standards, industrial participation and political alignment, which can slow execution.

“In practice, a hybrid model is likely to emerge: sovereign core capabilities combined with selective regional partnerships,” Yim said.

Initiating Cross-Border Collaboration

Sovereignty has become an industry watchword in recent years. The rise of geopolitical conflict and the need for secure, assured communication have driven nations to pursue sovereign satellite systems. The urgent demand has raised equally urgent economic, political and technological hurdles that nations and commercial industry are working to overcome.

Lisa Kuo, director of business development for satellite systems at Rocket Lab, has had many recent conversations with customers about sovereign and regional LEO. “Seeing the war and seeing how your critical infrastructure chain can be cut off … everybody said, we need our own constellation,” she told Constellations. “The need is real. The urgency is real. However, the way that they’re tackling this problem may or may not be as feasible as they’d like it to be.”

Experts compared the Asia Pacific proposal to the European Commission’s IRIS², which was formally introduced in 2022 and is expected to begin service around 2030. Europe’s 290-satellite LEO-MEO constellation has taken years of negotiation, massive public-private buy-in and roughly €11 billion ($12.9 billion) in total investment through a public-private partnership.

Nations of the EU have worked together for decades under the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Commission framework. “For the Asia-Pacific, it’s not like that,” Kuo said. Nations such as Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and others have worked together as individual space agencies, “but they don’t have an ESA-type of entity that coordinates all space projects.”

The diversity of the region will also be a factor, according to Hirozaku Mori, CEO of WARPSPACE USA and chief strategy officer of WARPSPACE, a Japanese company developing interoperable optical inter-satellite links with a multi-protocol modem.

“The biggest benefit is obviously the cost,” Mori told Constellations. “The challenge lies in economic disparity. The APAC region has greater economic and technical disparities than Europe, and confrontation is inevitable. The presence of China in some countries also makes things difficult in terms of security.”

The Realities of Finance and Physics

Across the board, experts agreed that the financial benefits of a regional LEO constellation outweigh the risks of a single nation building its own. The cost of a minimally viable non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) broadband constellation of roughly 100 to 200 satellites is in the billions of dollars, including ground infrastructure, terminals and launch. Replacing satellites with a 5- to 7-year lifecycle can also reach billions of dollars, as evidenced in Eutelsat’s recent OneWeb constellation refresh. Those economic factors make it difficult for a single nation to justify a sovereign NGSO constellation, explained Blaine Curcio, senior advisor at Novaspace, unless the project has a way to pay for itself.

“If you don’t have significant commercial traction from day one, you’re basically committing yourself to a bottomless pit of CapEx spend because you have to keep refreshing the constellation,” Curcio said. “There’s a chicken and egg element to that.”

Unlike GEO, which provides slower but reliable, geographically-focused connectivity, the physics of LEO raises questions about wasted capacity and the advantages of regional and global service. Outside of China, Australia and India, the largest nations in the Asia-Pacific are around 1% or less of the total global landmass. Even with maritime and aero connectivity, the vast majority of sovereign LEO coverage would fall over someone else’s territory.

“With the sheer scale and nature of the technology we are talking about, it is meant to be global; it is not meant to be for a single nation state,” said Neha Idnani, regional vice president, APAC at Eutelsat and board director of OneWeb India.

Eutelsat’s approach has been to leverage its global infrastructure with a business model focused on meeting local partners’ requirements and regulations. “Security, sovereignty, data sovereignty, reliability and resilience are very, very important in today’s world. But that’s achievable through cross-border collaboration, cross-party partnerships,” she said.

There are ways for jurisdictions to achieve sovereignty without a full-stack constellation, according to Idnani. “It’s really data localization and data sovereignty and control.” Citing OneWeb’s ground infrastructure and terminal deployments in Korea, Idnani noted the importance of “deploying physical point-of-presence infrastructure for government use, which is completely controlled, managed and operated by the government in-country.” She also emphasized an organizational commitment to encryption and regulatory controls to ensure “watertight” compliance with national and local mandates.

While some companies are effectively navigating local regulations, there are hurdles that have limited wider, more rapid adoption of satellite services in the region. Some national regulations that require physical, in-country gateways or local incorporation can create “major bottlenecks,” according to Peng Zhao, vice president of policy and regulatory at the Global Satellite Operators Association (GSOA). “Such mandates ignore the transnational nature of modern satellite architectures,” said Zhao. “They result in duplicated infrastructure, operational inefficiencies, and higher costs for end-users, delaying the introduction of satellite services to consumers and undermining the goal of affordable universal access.”

Growing Demand and the 5G/6G Transformation

The accelerating demand for satellite connectivity across APAC can be seen in the adoption of commercial services. Indonesia and the Philippines are currently the third and sixth largest market for Starlink services, according to a recent report from Ookla. OneWeb has distribution agreements in place in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and across the wider APAC region including Telstra, Airtel, NT Thailand and other telcos. Amazon Leo, which will start rolling out service in 2026, has agreements with Thaicom, NBN Co., and a strategic collaboration with NTT/SKY Perfect JSAT. Telesat Lightspeed, expected to be online in 2028, has deals with ADN Telecom for services in Bangladesh and South Asia, as well as an agreement with Vocus in Australia.

Additionally, India’s satellite communication market is expected to triple to $14.8 billion by 2033, according to the Ministry of Communications, following a series of reforms that accelerated the pace of private sector growth.

“The emphasis on satellite communications is successfully translating into more robust, multi-layered networks,” said Zhao, adding satellites are actively providing 4G and 5G cellular backhaul in the region.

“[The] hottest technology topic is no doubt D2D,” Zhao told Constellations. He identified a recent trend of satellite operators using both 3GPP non-terrestrial network standards on Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) spectrum for regional services as well as International Mobile Telecommunications (IMS) spectrum for seamless roaming outside of terrestrial network coverage.

In addition to direct-to-device, aggressive 5G deployments and the progression to 6G further underscore the role of satellite connectivity. “Everything on 6G is about how to seamlessly integrate between non-terrestrial and terrestrial networks,” said Kuo. “A lot of telecom operators realize you have to go to space if you want to get to 6G. So, there is a push, even from the telecom providers, to go into space, which ultimately will enable them to succeed.”

National mandates are also playing an important role in expanding satellite adoption. India’s National Broadband Mission has invested $100 billion for each village to have broadband access, which includes satellite for remote areas. Indonesia’s SATRIA-1 project invested roughly $550 million into a high-throughput satellite to provide free internet to thousands of public facilities, such as schools and health centers. In February, the Philippines launched the National Digital Connectivity Plan to achieve universal internet access by 2028 using a mix of terrestrial, submarine and satellite technologies to bridge the digital divide.

The combination of government demand for sovereign communications and digital inclusivity is intersecting a large youth population and rapidly maturing technology base, fueling the Asia-Pacific space economy. “APAC is a growth frontier,” said Idnani. “We are talking about a region which now represents, give or take, 60% of the world population. The sheer scale of impact and opportunity of these things put together is immense in this region.”

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