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Taiwan throttles 4G and 5G for war-game mobile network test
The 30-minute exercise is expected to affect about 17 million people, or 73 percent of Taiwan’s population, while voice calls, SMS and emergency cell broadcasts continue.
Taiwan is running its first mobile network throttling exercise this week as a civil defence test for how the public responds to wartime communications disruptions, South China Morning Post reports. The drills will simulate severe mobile network congestion by reducing 4G and 5G bandwidth for 30 minutes, with an event in central Taiwan on Monday and another planned for northern Taiwan on Thursday.
The National Communications Commission expects about 17 million people, or 73 percent of the island’s population, to be affected. Authorities said the goal is not a full internet shutdown, with voice calls, SMS messages and emergency cell broadcasts continuing to function.
Services that rely on mobile data could become temporarily unavailable during the throttling, including video streaming, video calls, mobile payments, online banking, e-ticketing, food delivery, QR code verification, cloud synchronisation and app authentication.
After the first phase in central Taiwan on Monday, some users complained that the throttling left them effectively without mobile internet access, with reports that 4G and 5G slowed to the point that they could not send online messages or load browser homepages, according to the outlet.