Cable service operators will be able to raise their monthly service fees if they agree to several conditions, although the NT$600 per month cap for the fee remains, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday, after it approved a proposal to allow operators more flexibility in adjusting their subscription fees.
Chi Hsiao-cheng (紀效正), a specialist in the commission’s department of planning, said that the plan was drafted as an incentive to encourage more operators to offer digital cable services.
“All the cable operators are required to provide their customers a la carte service plans by 2017, with the channels using digital signals to broadcast their programs,” Chi said. “This plan was designed to motivate cable operators to speed up their efforts and reward those reaching that goal earlier than the government’s designated deadline.”
Operators can set their own monthly subscription fee each year, which must be approved by either service fee review boards of the local governments of the areas they operate in or by the commission.
Given the slow progress cable operators have made toward providing digital services, the NCC has chosen in recent years to either reject the annual applications to raise fees or asked them to accept a fee lower than the one they proposed.
“Should the cable operators fulfill the conditions that we propose, we would consider approving a reasonable adjustment in their monthly fees,” Chi said.
The conditions include providing 100 percent digital cable services, offering value-added services to subscribers, making multiple service options available, disclosing full information about the service contract and protecting consumers’ rights, Chi said.
However, the incentive plan would only be in effect until the nation transitions fully to digital cable services, Chi said.
In other developments in Taipei, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said that it will soon provide a list of regulations governing the promotion of food considered unsuitable for children to consume over a long period and banning television commercials for junk food from appearing on 14 children or youth channels.
FDA Deputy Director-General Chiang Yu-mei (姜郁美) said the agency has been soliciting different opinions on the regulations since November last year, and it will discuss the details with experts before releasing them to the public later this year.
Under the proposed regulations, potato chips, sodas, fried chicken, French fries, cakes, pastries and sugary beverages will be considered inappropriate for children to consume over the long term.
The regulations will also offer a clear definition of junk food, including percentages of fat, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, calcium and sugar in such foods.
They will also bar businesses selling such foodstuffs from encouraging their consumption by giving out free toys or offering discounts on the purchase of toys.
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