The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said it might stop issuing operational licenses for mobile TV.
Commission spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said the NCC had briefed the Executive Yuan about the possibility of freezing the issuing of mobile TV licenses, adding that the commission believed the market for mobile TV was still in its initial stage and that a profitable business model had yet to emerge.
“The government cannot dig a hole and let operators jump in. We have to wait for a better time [to give out licenses],” Chen said.
Tsai Ping-huang (蔡炳煌), director of the commission’s Department of Planning, said that mobile TV services also had to compete with those on mobile phones and tablet PCs.
“They [mobile phones and tablet PCs] can be easily upgraded to provide a similar service that is more accessible to users,” Tsai said.
A commission source said it had taken a more cautious attitude after it issued six licenses for the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) service three years ago, none which have been profitable.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications, which oversees the use of frequencies, had originally planned to issue two licenses for mobile TV services by the end of last year.
However, media operators say mobile TV services should be regulated by the Television and Broadcasting Act (廣播電視法) rather than the Telecommunications Act (電信法), as the former would give the commission more latitude in regulating content, they said.
Facing the dilemma, the ministry has stopped issuing licenses for the time being.
Chen also said the NCC may also propose postponing the release of a second package of licenses for terrestrial TV services, as the current terrestrial TV networks have not been using the channels efficiently.
NCC statistics show that many of the networks’ digital channels have high rerun rates. The China Television News Channel, for example, has a rerun rate of 93 percent, while that of its Entertainment Channel is 97.6 percent.
The entire programming on DIMO TV, the Public Television Service’s (PTS) digital channel, consists of programs already aired on PTS.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching