(Adnkronos) – Taiwan has launched its first mobile network slowdown exercise, a new civil defense measure designed to prepare the population for possible communication disruptions in the event of war, cyberattacks, or natural disasters. The South China Morning Post reports that the first test took place today in the central part of the island, while a second trial is scheduled for Thursday in the north. The exercise consists of a drastic 30-minute reduction in the capacity of 4G and 5G networks and is expected to involve a total of approximately 17 million people, or 73% of the population. Voice calls, SMS, and emergency alerts remain active, while services that depend on data connection, from digital payments to home banking and video calls, may become temporarily unusable. However, the first test sparked numerous protests: several users reported a slowdown so severe that it effectively amounted to an internet blackout.
The exercise is part of new urban resilience programs promoted by Taiwanese authorities. Premier Cho Jung-tai clarified that it is “a network slowdown, not an internet shutdown,” explaining that the goal is to verify the government’s and population’s ability to continue operating under conditions of severe communication limitations and to encourage the adoption of alternative systems.
The initiative was strongly contested by the opposition Kuomintang, the nationalist party favoring a rapprochement with Beijing. According to legislator Ko Ju-chun, reducing mobile network capacity to about 1% of the normal level is essentially equivalent to interrupting the service. “True communication resilience means that backup systems immediately come into operation when the main network fails. The exercise should verify if these systems work, not if the government is capable of taking away internet from the population,” he stated. Beijing dismissed the exercises as “little more than political theater and an attempt to boost morale,” arguing that they cannot alter what it considers the inevitable reunification of Taiwan with China.
