Legislative Acts

Mobile Network Throttling Drill

While much of the world is working to prevent internet blackouts, Taiwan is practicing on ordinary people’s mobile data. Under currently available public information, the 2026 urban resilience exercise already ran a 30-minute “mobile network disruption” drill across seven central jurisdictions on August 10, with the northern wave scheduled for August 13—and on August 3, the government also sent an advance cell-broadcast alert to phones across Taiwan. After the central wave, field reports were not “a bit slower.” Some people could not even open a speed-test page. Legislator Ju-Chun Ko supports disaster preparedness and real communications-resilience testing, but opposes dropping millions of ordinary users into a throttled environment while the legal basis, test objectives, success metrics, and risk assessments remain unclear, and opposes treating the disaster alert system as a government calendar and overusing national alerts. With the central wave done, he wants the government to account for metrics, damage assessment, and responsibility before the north goes next.

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.

The August 10 Central Wave: Throttling, or a Blackout?

At 2:30 p.m. on August 10, as soon as the central wave started, a staff member from Legislator Ko’s office on the ground in central Taiwan reported that Google would not connect—and even a speed-test page would not load. From a user’s point of view, that is not measurable “throttling.” It is simply offline. If the government still wants to claim the impact was under control, publish the raw connection data by operator, location, and time—do not make the public guess.

The exercise was booked for 30 minutes. The same staff member said it wrapped after about 25. If this is a formal drill to validate response capacity, start and end times are not enough: How long did it actually run? Why did it stop early? Was a stop or recovery procedure triggered? Ko wants verifiable exercise metrics and a damage assessment—not a shrug of “well, it was not a total outage.”

CNA’s field report put it bluntly: in Chiayi, LINE photos that normally take a few seconds barely moved after the throttle; at Douliu Station in Yunlin, LINE was almost unusable; someone tried to send a Help image and could not. Web pages, mobile payments, games, and speed-test pages locked up the same way. Phone calls stayed normal. In Changhua, a supermarket just pulled down the shutters for half an hour. In Nantou, a civil servant had full signal bars and still could not open a webpage. Add the office reports of parking systems losing connectivity and a national-alert message that still pointed people to evacuation guidance online—LINE and other mobile-data services went down. If you restrict the network and then tell people to look up evacuation info online, that information cannot live only on the same connection you just pinched. The script is already broken.

What a real exercise should test is the other half: after a blackout, or after submarine cables or base stations fail, how fast can government fail over to diverse backups—microwave links and LEO systems such as OneWeb, Kuiper, and Starlink. Define the metrics up front. Publish the damage assessment afterward. Say who may flip the switch on, who may stop it, and who cleans up. Restricting ordinary users without a working backup does not prove communications resilience. It only proves someone can press a button.

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.

Aug 3: Cell Alerts Went Off Across Taiwan as a Drill Notice

On August 3 at 2:30 p.m., many people’s phones suddenly emitted a piercing alert. Many initially assumed an earthquake, tsunami, or major disaster. When they picked up their phones, it turned out to be only a notice: “A government drill will take place in seven to ten days.” The Wan-an air-defense exercise (now renamed the urban resilience air-defense drill) has run for many years—when has an advance alert ever been sent a week before the drill to remind the whole public?

Alerts are not inherently wrong; overusing them is. Treating the Public Warning System (PWS) as a government calendar will only erode public vigilance over time. If the national alert becomes the “boy who cried wolf,” then the next time an earthquake, air raid, tsunami, or other major disaster actually occurs, people’s first reaction to a phone alert may be doubt—“Is this just another drill?”—rather than taking shelter. That is exactly the risk the government should not create. If every drill and every administrative measure can trigger an Emergency Alert, how is that different from being @-mentioned at will in a LINE group?

The Legal Basis for Cell Broadcasts: Article 55 Covers Only Disaster Response

The main legal basis for cell-broadcast alerts is the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act, the Civil Defense Act, and the All-out Defense Mobilization Preparedness Act, which authorize central and local competent authorities to issue alerts and warnings when a disaster under the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act occurs, or when an air raid or related drill is being prepared under the Civil Defense Act or the All-out Defense Mobilization Preparedness Act. The relevant authorities then require telecom operators to send cell-broadcast alerts under Article 55 of the Mobile Broadband Business Management Rules.

After further review, Legislator Ko’s office found that Article 55 of the Mobile Broadband Business Management Rules allows requiring telecom operators to send cell-broadcast alerts only for disaster prevention and response. Yet both the 2024 satellite-launch alert and this network-disruption drill notice sent cell-broadcast alerts to everyone—actions that fall outside the current legal framework.

Improper island-wide national alerts are not a first. Three days before the 2024 presidential election, the Ministry of National Defense issued a national alert that, due to a wording error in English, translated the “satellite” launched by mainland China as a “missile,” causing public panic. It was later confirmed that “satellite launches” are not among the events that may trigger a national alert.

With the 2024 satellite-alert blunder as a fresh precedent, this network-disruption drill notice shows that horizontal coordination within the government has failed to compile and deliver accurate information to the public in a timely manner. This not only risks public desensitization but can weaken national-security awareness—fostering a “wolf is coming” mindset in which people will not take a genuine national-security cell alert seriously when the state truly sends one.

Network Shutdown Is a Weapon: Democracies Use Tabletop Exercises for Communications Resilience

In war or disaster, communications are a critical link in every country’s exercise script. But a network shutdown is a weapon; no country would actively “drill disconnecting its network” for an adversary to observe—the logic does not hold. According to CommonWealth Magazine, “Apart from authoritarian states that forcibly disconnect networks in response to public protests, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore mostly rehearse communications resilience through scenario-based tabletop exercises (TTX).”

This does not match the Presidential Office spokesperson’s claim that “democratic countries all drill this way (disconnecting millions of people from the network).” The government should not escalate to nationwide panic under the banner of national defense. At the same time, the advance cell alert for this network-disruption drill shows the ruling party was unprepared: the competent authority, worried that a network-disruption drill would provoke public backlash, tried to dilute and disclaim responsibility through the advance alert—only to backfire and cause panic and inconvenience.

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 join the August 7 urban resilience air-defense exercise—without putting ordinary local users into this mobile-data restriction. That is not a mystery: NCC Secretary-General Wen Chun-yu told CNA the southern drill runs from 10:00 to 10:30 a.m., right in TWSE trading hours, so a simultaneous throttle would disrupt people trading stocks on their phones. Hence no southern mobile-network slowdown this time.

In other words, the government has already admitted that half an hour of restricted mobile data can break phone-based stock orders. Stock traders get a pass. Central and northern ordinary users, shop checkouts, LINE, and evacuation guidance do not. That is not an island-wide resilience test. It is selective disruption by schedule and zip code.

Three questions still need a real answer:

1. If this test is indispensable to national resilience, why can the south get a full regional exemption for trading hours while the center and north cannot simply be rescheduled under the same standard?
2. If this is only a sample, what standard selected these 14 central and northern jurisdictions—beyond “they do not collide with the morning open”?
3. If phone stock trading is enough reason not to throttle, why is it still fine to put ordinary users, mobile payments, and daily connectivity under the knife in the central and northern afternoon waves?

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.

Ko also draws a political-risk line with Uganda, where authorities have restricted internet access around elections under national-security, disinformation, or foreign-interference justifications. Turning shutdowns into a political habit should not be Taiwan’s path. That is not a claim that Taiwan and Uganda share the same institutions or events. It is an oversight point. If Taiwan lets an administrative agency lock in a precedent to restrict communications across large areas before objectives, success criteria, risk assessment, and accountability are clearly published, the public has every reason to ask who gets to flip that switch next.

What people felt on August 10 in central Taiwan was blunter: many were not “a bit slower.” They were throttled into a disconnect. So “throttling equaled a blackout” is not rhetorical spice. It is what web pages, LINE, mobile payments, and other mobile-data services actually did. Ko therefore wants the exercise script published in advance; a network-outage response manual and alternative information systems built; costs and outcomes disclosed afterward; and legislative oversight put in place.

An administrative switch that can strip mobile data from large regions in peacetime should not become precedent while law, process, and oversight are still a blur—even if the first flip 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?

Two Demands

On this incident, Legislator Ko makes two demands:

1. Reject this hasty, undemocratic fake network-shutdown and throttling drill!
2. Reject the overuse and abuse of the national alert as a fake “national security” practice!

The real resilience of a democratic society is not merely that the government has the power to press this switch. More importantly, when the switch may be pressed, who may press it, and who may call it to a halt must all be subject to law and public oversight. We ask the DPP government to stop manufacturing public panic and inconvenience, and to stop treating the national alert as its own election tool.

Key Resources

Timeline