Taiwan Is Going to Slow Down Mobile Internet on Purpose — Here's Why

Taiwan will deliberately slow down mobile internet speeds for the first time during its annual civil defence exercises on Aug. 10 and Aug. 13, 2026. The goal is to simulate what would happen if internet access were badly reduced during a disaster or an attack, and to see how well communications hold up Focus Taiwan. Mobile phone users in Taipei received an emergency push alert during the week of Aug. 10 warning them about the upcoming internet slowdown drill Wall Street Journal.

The nationwide Urban Resilience Exercises and air raid drills are scheduled across two dates, Aug. 10 and Aug. 13, 2026 Focus Taiwan. This is the first time Taiwan has included a deliberate slowdown of mobile internet speeds in its civil defence exercises Reuters.

The drills build on work by Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs, known as moda. In March 2024, moda published a briefing called "Results of the Program to Strengthen National Communications Network Resilience." It laid out response measures for situations where a network is damaged or a large-scale internet outage happens during an emergency moda.gov.tw.

Moda also runs regular cyber attack-defense drills. These cover social engineering — tricking people into giving up sensitive information — as well as live exercises on government systems and simulations of DDoS attacks, where attackers flood a system with so much traffic that it stops working. These drills target Class-A public agencies and central government bodies moda.gov.tw. In fiscal year 114 (2025), the drills covered 71 Class-A agencies and found 442 potential risks in their information systems moda.gov.tw.

The resilience program also looks at submarine cables — the undersea wires that carry internet data between countries. According to moda data, about 80% of submarine cable outages over the past five years were caused by human activity, including ships dragging anchors, fishing operations, and sand dredging. About 20% were caused by natural aging and other factors moda.gov.tw.

Taiwan's National Communications Commission (NCC) has been tracking infrastructure threats around the world through its international communications industry observation platform. A November 2023 NCC report noted that the UK's national infrastructure faces long-term and significant threats to communications, drinking water, electricity, transport, financial networks, and internet connectivity, amid increased cyber activity and ongoing geopolitical challenges NCC.

The broader context here is a shift in how Taiwan prepares for disruptions. Previous moda efforts focused on finding weak spots in government systems and building backup plans for network outages. The August 2026 drills take that a step further by bringing the test into the civilian domain — checking whether ordinary people, emergency services, and local governments can keep functioning when internet access is degraded.

The submarine cable data adds an important layer. Because most cable outages are caused by people rather than nature, resilience planning cannot focus only on natural disasters. A ship dragging its anchor can cut a cable just as effectively as a deliberate attack, and Taiwan's response plans need to account for both.

The NCC's reference to UK infrastructure threats offers a useful comparison. Both Taiwan and the UK see communications, electricity, transport, and financial networks as facing long-term, significant threats. The NCC report's framing of these challenges amid rising cyber activity and geopolitical pressure lines up Taiwan's threat assessment with those of its allies.

For policymakers and security planners, the August 2026 exercises will produce real data on how systems that depend on mobile networks perform when speeds are reduced. Emergency push alerts sent to Taipei users during the week of Aug. 10 serve as the first test of public alerting before the slowdown. The results may shape future moda policy on network resilience standards and whether civilian internet disruption scenarios become a regular part of the annual civil defence exercise cycle.