Taiwan coverage

What the Taiwan numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 88 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 27 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Taiwan when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Chunghwa and FarEasTone. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Taiwan

• Chunghwa Telecom: Chunghwa Telecom is Taiwan's largest mobile operator, with about 11.2 million subscribers excluding IoT SIMs at the end of 2025, a 39.7 percent share of customers and 40.8 percent of mobile service revenue. By then 46.4 percent of its smartphone users were on 5G.
• Chunghwa Telecom: Chunghwa launched 5G on 30 June 2020, and its 5G licence runs until 31 December 2040. In May 2022 it bought a further 2x10 MHz in the 900 MHz band, with equipment, from Asia Pacific Telecom.
• Taiwan Mobile: Taiwan Mobile completed its merger with Taiwan Star Telecom on 1 December 2023, after 23 months of preparation covering IT systems, network integration and customer rights, and said the combined company served 10.28 million subscribers.
• Far EasTone: Far EasTone completed its merger with Asia Pacific Telecom on 15 December 2023. It says the merged operator holds 980 MHz of 4G and 5G spectrum, including 120 MHz for 5G, the most 5G bandwidth of Taiwan's three networks.
• Far EasTone: Asia Pacific Telecom customers kept their SIM cards and tariffs after the merger, and their phones continued to show the GT network name. Far EasTone set out to consolidate base stations, replacing 5,000 sites, which it said would nearly double coverage for former Asia Pacific users.

Older networks in Taiwan

• Taiwan's 3G licences expired on 31 December 2018, a year after the country closed its 2G networks. At the start of 2018 the regulator counted more than 6.43 million 3G users who still had to move to 4G, against about 22 million already on 4G.
• 3G data ended in 2018 but 3G voice stayed on because VoLTE was not yet mature. The regulator then scheduled the end of 3G voice for 30 June 2024, after which calls and data run only over 4G and 5G.
• With 3G gone, a phone that lacks VoLTE or has no NCC type approval cannot make calls on Taiwanese networks, and that includes the emergency numbers 110, 119 and 112. Older handsets are the ones to check before travelling.

5G in Taiwan

• Taiwan's 5G auction closed on 21 February 2020 after raising NT$142.191 billion. In the 3.5 GHz band Chunghwa took 90 MHz, Far EasTone 80 MHz, Taiwan Mobile 60 MHz and Taiwan Star 40 MHz, while 28 GHz blocks went to Chunghwa, Far EasTone, Taiwan Mobile and Asia Pacific Telecom.
• Licence rules required each 3.5 GHz winner to build at least 1,000 5G base stations in that band within five years, and 28 GHz holders at least 375 per 100 MHz held. Winners of the 2019 bands also had to cover half the population with 5G in that period.
• As a condition of approving the 2023 mergers, the regulator required Taiwan Mobile and Far EasTone to raise 4G coverage to 99 percent and 5G coverage to 98 percent by 2027, with 5G coverage in rural areas at 95 percent.

Network notes for Taiwan

• Chinese vessels damaged both undersea cables linking the Matsu islands to Taiwan, on 2 and 8 February 2023. Residents spent 50 days with little or no internet until the TAIMA No. 3 cable was repaired on 31 March 2023.
• Chunghwa Telecom has recorded more than 20 incidents of damage to the cables between Taiwan and Matsu in five years, and said two more cables to the outlying islands were due for completion in 2024 and 2025.
• In June 2025 the Tainan District Court sentenced the Chinese captain of a Togolese-registered freighter to three years in prison for deliberately damaging the undersea cable between Taiwan and Penghu in February that year.
• In early January 2025 a Chinese-owned freighter was suspected of damaging an undersea cable near Keelung Harbor in northern Taiwan. Chunghwa Telecom said the break did not affect internet service across the island.
• Chunghwa Telecom distributes OneWeb low Earth orbit satellite service. The constellation completed coverage of Taiwan and its offshore islands in March 2025, and commercial service for government and enterprise customers began in June 2025.
• Chunghwa describes submarine cables as Taiwan's indispensable international route that satellite and microwave links cannot replace, and notes that completion of its APRICOT cable has been postponed to 2028.