Cable television subscribers will be able to choose their payment period from next month, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said yesterday that most subscribers have to pay for cable six months or even a year in advance, which he said was unfair.
He said that the Consumer Protection Commission of the Executive Yuan has passed an amendment to standard contracts for cable television subscriptions allowing consumers to choose between paying in advance or paying later.
If a customer chooses to pay in advance, cable service providers must deposit the payments in trust accounts with financial institutions or offer performance-bond guarantees. The customers can choose to pay between two months and a year in advance.
Those choosing to pay after using the service will receive a bill each month from the cable television service providers.
Meanwhile, Chen also said the NCC is in the process of amending the Cable Television Act (有線電視法) to allow cable operators to offer services in different regions of the country, provided that any operator’s customers do not exceed one-third of viewing households nationwide.
Currently, cable television operators are only allowed to offer services in designated regions.
“Now each region only has one or two cable television service providers. Once the amendment is passed, the market will be open to competition, which will raise the overall operating efficiency,” Chen said. “They [cable service providers] cannot just sit there and collect payments and do nothing to improve the quality of service.”
The amendment, however, did not solve problems facing Chunghwa Telecom’s multimedia-on-demand (MOD) system, as the commission has yet to determine whether the system should be regulated by the Telecommunications Act (電信法) or the Cable Television Act.
Chen also said that the commission was having problems determining if MOD and cable television shared the same market.
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