Why Taiwan is conducting its first-ever mobile network throttling exercise
Taiwan is conducting its first-ever mobile network throttling exercise this week to test how the public responds to wartime communications disruptions, a new civil defence measure that has sparked criticism over the government’s preparedness. The exercise, held in central Taiwan on Monday and planned for northern Taiwan on Thursday, will simulate severe mobile network congestion by reducing 4G…
Taiwan is conducting its first-ever mobile network throttling exercise this week, aimed at testing public response to wartime communications disruptions and enhancing preparedness for potential outages. The exercise, scheduled for central and northern Taiwan, simulates severe mobile network congestion by reducing 4G and 5G bandwidth for 30 minutes, affecting approximately 17 million people—73% of the island’s population.
While voice calls, SMS messages, and emergency cell broadcasts will continue, services reliant on mobile data may become temporarily unavailable, leading to complaints from users about reduced internet speed and the inability to perform essential online activities. The drill is part of Taiwan’s expanded Urban Resilience exercises, which aim to prepare civilians for network outages caused by war, cyberattacks, or natural disasters.
Premier Cho Jung-tai emphasized that the exercise is "network throttling, not an internet shutdown," drawing on experiences from other democracies to test the government's ability to operate under degraded communications and encourage the public to prepare alternative means of staying connected.
Brief written by urgent.news from South China Morning Post's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
