New Taipei City (新北市) has become the most sought-after market among cable TV operators since the government allowed them to branch out into other service areas last year, the National Communications Commission said yesterday.
The policy of allowing cable service operators to branch out to new areas was part of the commission’s plan to terminate a monopoly in the majority of the nation’s service areas and raise services’ quality by encouraging competition among operators. A service area can be a city or a county.
The commission yesterday approved an application by Chuan Kuo Digital Cable TV Co, a newcomer in the market, to offer services in one of the nation’s five special municipalities. The commission had already approved similar applications from West Coast Cable TV Co and VeeTime. West Coast targets customers in Greater Taichung, whereas VeeTime is eyeing the market in Greater Tai-chung, as well as Nantou County.
Commission spokesperson Yu Hsiao-cheng (虞孝成) said that Chuan Kuo’s application was approved after the company made three major commitments.
He said that the company had promised that it would follow the commission’s policy in offering different “a la carte” cable service pricing plans. The company will also offer 100 Megabit-per-second (100Mbps) broadband Internet connections to its subscribers, if they request it, and will supply each subscriber with two set-top boxes free of charge.
Huang Chin-yi (黃金益), director of the commission’s communications management department, said that the company’s management team, led by Chuan Kuo chairman Hsu Chun-wei (徐君偉), was interviewed by commissioners.
“The applicant has secured the qualification to start preparing for its operations,” Huang said. “It plans to finish installing its entire infrastructure within two-and-a-half years and is scheduled to start operations in March next year.”
According to Huang, the company plans to carry out the infrastructure installation in three stages, with the first stage covering Toucheng (土城), Banciao (板橋), Jhonghe (中和) and Yonghe (永和) districts in New Taipei City.
Huang said that the company could apply to have its infrastructure inspected by the commission when it is more than 30 percent completed, adding that Chuan Kuo can only begin operating after it passes the inspection.
Huang also confirmed that the commission is still reviewing four other applications. Two of the applicants have indicated that they also aim to provide cable television services in New Taipei City.
The special municipality currently has eight service areas and 12 cable TV operators. The number of cable TV subscribers in the city is about 1.44 million. Statistics from the New Taipei City Government show that the city has a population of about 3.9 million.
Prior to his position at Chuan Kuo, Hsu was deputy general manager of Yeong Jia Leh Cable TV Co, one of the cable service systems owned by multiple-service operator Taiwan Broadband.
Yeong Jia Leh serves customers in New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang (新莊), Wugu (五股), Linkou (林口) and Taishan (泰山) districts.
Huang said that the national penetration rate of digital cable TV services has exceeded 25 percent and is showing 3 to 5 percent growth every quarter. He said the commission has planned to budget approximately NT$160 million (US$5.3 million) to boost the national penetration rate to 50 percent by the end of this year.
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
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
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