Legislative Acts

Mobile Network Throttling Drill

While much of the world is working to prevent internet blackouts, Taiwan is preparing to practice restricting mobile data for ordinary people. Under currently available public information, the 2026 urban resilience exercise will run 30-minute “mobile network disruption” drills on August 10 and 13 across 14 counties and cities in central and northern Taiwan. Legislator Ju-Chun Ko supports disaster preparedness and real communications-resilience testing, but opposes placing millions of ordinary users into a throttled environment while the legal basis, test objectives, success metrics, and risk assessments remain unclear.

What Has Been Publicly Announced

Based on media reporting and related government statements, the drill is not a total communications blackout. It targets mobile data:

Precision matters: this is not “all communications disappear.” Voice and SMS are expected to work. But many emergency, financial, and daily services now depend on mobile data.

Legislator Ko’s Position

Ko draws a clear line between two issues:

1. He supports genuine communications-resilience drills: when submarine cables fail, base stations are damaged, or power is lost, can government and telecom operators keep people connected?
2. He opposes the current plan to throttle ordinary users across 14 jurisdictions: the public should not become the test environment before objectives, success criteria, selection rationale, risk assessment, and legal authority are explained.

In his view, real communications resilience is not practicing how to disconnect people. It is ensuring information keeps flowing. Countries are expanding routes that are harder to cut. Taiwan should not do the opposite.

What Exactly Is Being Tested in 30 Minutes?

If the goal is to verify disaster roaming and tiered traffic control, the government should at least explain:

• Which failure scenario is being simulated?
• Which systems and procedures are being validated?
• Which services will be preserved?
• What counts as success?
• What data will be published afterward?

If the process is simply turning mobile data down or off and restoring it 30 minutes later, what did the telecom system learn? What did the government learn? What did ordinary people learn? That remains the central unanswered question.

Disaster roaming is meant to preserve connectivity

Disaster roaming is simple in principle: if operator A’s base stations fail, A’s users temporarily borrow networks still running under operators B or C and continue using calls, SMS, and mobile data.

In 2023, when the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) held its first disaster-roaming drill at Hsinchu County Stadium, participation was limited to selected numbers with manual network selection. MODA specifically said nearby base stations were not truly shut down, in order to protect communications rights and avoid public misunderstanding.

Three years later, the test jump from selected numbers inside a stadium to ordinary users across 14 counties and cities. What technical validation happened in between? Why are limited-number, single-base-station, or closed-environment tests no longer enough? The government has not explained.

Five Public Explanations Still Missing

Ko argues the government has not adequately published:

1. A quantified economic and social impact assessment.
2. Risks to medical, emergency, financial, and critical IoT systems.
3. A list of critical services that must stay online.
4. Immediately available stop and recovery mechanisms if something goes wrong.
5. A technical rationale for throttling real users across 14 jurisdictions instead of using selected numbers, designated base stations, or closed tests.

An NCC notice itself has acknowledged possible effects on stock trading, remittances, 110 video emergency reporting, and IoT devices that transmit data over mobile networks. Navigation, dispatch logistics, cloud authentication, security systems, long-term care alerts, and medical telemetry may also be affected.

Telling people to screenshot shelter locations in advance and avoid important online tasks during the drill is a reminder, not a risk assessment. Keeping voice and SMS is better than total outage, but it still does not answer: how many emergency services already depend on mobile data? Were they inventoried item by item? If a real incident occurs during the drill, who can immediately stop it?

Legal Authority and Power Boundaries

Ko notes that government does have authority to hold drills and require telecom cooperation. That point does not need denial. The hard question is different: does “authority to hold a drill” automatically mean “authority to strip mobile data from ordinary users across 14 jurisdictions”? A critical legal bridge is still missing.

Provisions that support drills and “ensuring communications”

• The Disaster Prevention and Protection Act allows drills by government and public utilities.
• Article 22 of the Telecommunications Management Act lets competent authorities, under their governing laws, designate telecom operators to take necessary measures to “ensure communications.”
• Articles 13 and 26 of the All-out Defense Mobilization Preparedness Act allow mobilization drills and, when necessary, designation of public and private industries to participate; Article 21 also covers communications mobilization preparedness, unified control, and facility protection.
• Article 14 of the Regulations on the Use of Public and Private Communications Facilities in Support of Military Control at Various Stages of Combat Readiness allows the armed forces to conduct communications exercises in the peacetime readiness stage and require cooperation.

Higher thresholds for broad communications control

Language that more clearly allows ordinary civilian communications to be subordinated to military communications appears in Article 16 of the same regulations, under the “emergency combat readiness” stage. By definition, that stage involves war that has begun or is imminent, or abnormal signs of partial or full invasion. There is no war now, and no presidential emergency decree. This is a peacetime exercise.

Article 24 of the All-out Defense Mobilization Preparedness Act concerns a technological talent pool and personnel support for military service. It is not a direct basis for restricting ordinary mobile data. Article 21 of the Civil Defense Act includes a residual “other necessary controls” clause, but air-defense exercises are led by the Ministry of National Defense, with NCC cooperating on communications. The government should state who issued the order to restrict mobile data, under which provision, and who is accountable.

Meanwhile, Article 8 of the Telecommunications Management Act generally requires operators not to refuse transmission of communications without legitimate reason and to prioritize emergency and public-interest communications. Article 40 requires public telecommunications networks to maintain appropriate service quality and emergency/priority handling capacity.

The issue is not denying the power to drill. It is testing proportionality and boundaries: How many people can be restricted, for how long, and for which services? Which agency must issue which order? Is there external oversight and remedy? “Cooperate with the drill” cannot be the entire answer.

Why These 14 Jurisdictions, and Why Not the South?

Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Pingtung also participate in the August 7 urban resilience air-defense exercise. Public materials may even list “network disruption” items. Yet ordinary users there are not clearly included in this mobile-data restriction.

Three questions remain unanswered:

1. If this test is indispensable to national resilience, why not the south?
2. If this is only a sample, what standard selected these 14 central and northern jurisdictions?
3. If the risk is too high for a simultaneous island-wide drill, why choose areas where population, financial transactions, and critical facilities are highly concentrated?

International Comparison: Broad Peacetime Throttling Is Rare in Democracies

The closest public cases Ko found include:

• Bangladesh, 2016: telecom regulators ran a full internet-shutdown drill in parts of Dhaka.
• Russia, 2021: authorities tested isolating the domestic network from the global internet, citing security and resilience, while civic groups feared a more complete state kill switch.

The technical methods are not identical to Taiwan’s plan. But in the available record, mature democracies rarely initiate mobile-data restrictions across such large areas and ordinary populations without a real disaster.

An administrative switch that can remove mobile data from large regions in peacetime should not become precedent while law, process, and oversight remain vague — even if the first use lasts only 30 minutes.

The Right Resilience Path: Add Routes, Do Not Practice Blackouts

Countries are expanding connections that are harder to cut — especially low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites, which can provide a path less dependent on ground facilities when submarine cables, terrestrial fiber, or base stations fail.

LEO capacity cannot yet replace all submarine cables and 4G/5G networks, but it can preserve essential links for command, disaster response, medical care, offshore islands, and critical infrastructure in the worst moments. The technology is also scaling quickly.

On July 21, 2026, the Legislative Yuan passed third reading on amendments to Articles 36 and 95 of the Telecommunications Management Act, advanced by Legislator Ko and others. That reform creates a lawful pathway for international LEO operators to enter Taiwan after national-security, cybersecurity, and public-interest review. See Multi-Satellite Regulatory Adaptation.

If Taiwan is already accelerating multi-satellite backup, drills should focus on:

• How to fail over when submarine cables break
• How to roam when base stations fail
• How to protect emergency and essential civilian communications under congestion
• Whether satellite, microwave, and terrestrial networks can actually switch and be verified

They should not center on throttling ordinary users on the traditional mobile network.

Five Questions for the Government

Until legal basis, objectives, success metrics, selection rationale, risk assessment, critical-service lists, and stop mechanisms are public, Legislator Ko calls to pause this drill that would directly affect ordinary users’ mobile data, and asks NCC, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, and the Ministry of National Defense to answer:

1. What exactly will these 30 minutes of mobile-data blackout or throttling verify?
2. Why must ordinary people be affected in practice?
3. Why only these 14 central and northern jurisdictions?
4. Who is responsible if someone misses an emergency call for help, a medical alert, or a critical transaction?
5. What is the specific legal basis for implementation?

If the government provides complete answers, he will respond publicly.

A drill can be rerun. An accident cannot. Thirty minutes is short, but a precedent letting the administration unilaterally restrict communications across large regions can last a very long time. If government may flip this switch, who may call stop?

Key Resources

Timeline