Taiwan eSIM
Orbislo carries traffic in Taiwan on Chunghwa and FarEasTone. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
- Networks
- Chunghwa and FarEasTone
- Typical speed
- 88 Mbps typical, 27 Mbps at busy times
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
What 88 Mbps actually means in Taiwan
Typical download speed on Orbislo in Taiwan: 88 Mbps. That puts Taiwan well above the Asia median of 43.9 Mbps.
The tenth percentile is 27 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
At these speeds nothing on a phone is limited by the connection. Video calls are comfortable, a laptop can be tethered for a full working day, and large photo backups finish without planning around them.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Taiwan on Chunghwa and FarEasTone. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Taiwan: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
Landing in Taiwan
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Taiwan and it attaches to Chunghwa.
On landing there is one thing to check: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Coverage across Taiwan
The figures above cover Taiwan as a whole, and a national figure hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taichung, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
Getting a local SIM in Taiwan
A prepaid line is not switched on until the operator has checked the buyer's details and loaded them into its own records, and the record has to carry two identity document numbers rather than one. For a foreign national those are the passport and an alien permanent resident certificate, or one of the two plus a further document that establishes who you are.
What is restricted in Taiwan
- Prepaid lines after departure: Operators must check non-Taiwanese prepaid users against immigration records and restrict or suspend the prepaid service once the holder has left Taiwan or overstayed. A visitor who returns while the card is still valid has to re-verify their identity with the operator before the line works again.
- Roaming on high-risk foreign networks: Before carrying roaming traffic for foreign operators that the authorities classify as high risk, Taiwanese networks must match the user's passport number and name against entry records. A user with no entry record gets no roaming until they verify their identity in person at an operator counter.
- Roaming blocks on named numbers: When the telecom regulator or judicial police report that a foreign operator's service breaks Taiwanese law, Taiwanese networks must stop providing roaming to the specific numbers, number ranges or IMSIs named in the notice.
- BeiDou satellite terminals: Chinese BeiDou satellite messengers and similar terminals use frequencies that are not approved in Taiwan and are illegal to hold or use. Users face fines of NT$10,000 to NT$50,000, importers and sellers NT$100,000 to NT$500,000, and the equipment is confiscated. Inmarsat and Thuraya devices are the legal alternatives.
- Phones and tablets in luggage: A traveller may carry up to five phones, tablets or other devices with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth into Taiwan for personal use without an NCC import permit. The exemption does not cover mobile satellite earth stations, and anything that needs a permit must be declared at the red customs channel.
Worth knowing about Taiwan
- The operator has two days from taking the application to load the buyer's details into its system, so a counter that promises the line will work the moment you walk out is working ahead of the paperwork.
- Prepaid operators have to re-check their subscriber records every week. Where a line is running with no customer record behind it, the operator tells the holder to supply one within a week and suspends the line if that week passes.
- Every operator that offers voice service must connect calls to 110, 112 and 119 free of charge and handle them with priority. The same rules oblige operators to deliver disaster warnings from the authorities by cell broadcast at no cost to the user.
- Dial 119 for an ambulance or the fire service, 110 for the police and 118 for the coastguard. The 0800 024 111 helpline answers questions from foreigners in Taiwan.
- Under the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act an applicant must present identity documents, an agent needs an authorisation certificate on top of their own ID, and the operator checks the applicant against a government-designated database before the contract is signed.
How Taiwan compares across Asia
- Regional typical speed
- 42.95 Mbps
- Upstream networks
- 2, Chunghwa, FarEasTone
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- Hong Kong, 92 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Macau, 84 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 3: Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung
