The throttling exercise repeats across northern Taiwan

What happened

The second round ran between 14:30 and 15:00 on 13 August 2026 across seven northern jurisdictions — Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu City, and Hsinchu and Yilan counties — under the same National Communications Commission instruction as the 10 August round, and on the last full day of Han Kuang. Mobile web traffic was slowed to 256 Kbps, leaving little beyond text usable; video, streaming, video calling and large transfers were the practical casualties. The same exclusions applied: voice, 110 and 119, SMS, cell-broadcast alerts, fixed broadband and Wi-Fi, and military and dedicated networks. Fourteen cities and counties were covered across the two rounds. President Lai Ching-te publicly apologised for the inconvenience and described the drill as necessary. Areas outside the two named groups — including Kaohsiung, Tainan, Hualien, Taitung and Pingtung — were not part of either window.

Recorded separately from the 10 August round because the geography, the date and the population affected all differ, and because the second round is what makes the first a policy rather than a one-off. The jurisdiction lists are held in full here so that any later summary can be checked against them: the recurring misreading of this event is that Taiwan "switched off the internet", and the only durable defence against that is a record showing two dated, bounded regional windows and a list of what kept running. The 9 August brief named the observable as what the government would report about which components were actually exercised. This is that report, for one component.

Confidence: High