A survey by the Taiwan Digital Convergence Development Association showed that more than 60 percent of respondents support the plan to switch to an “a la carte” pricing scheme for TV cable services by 2017.
The telephone survey found that 56.5 percent of those polled are dissatisfied with the current pricing plan for cable services, in which consumers pay a fixed monthly fee of between NT$490 and NT$600 to watch about 100 channels. About 33 percent said there was nothing wrong with the present service.
The National Communications Commission’s proposal to implement an a la carte pricing scheme, in which customers pay for bundles of channels they specifically subscribe to, was supported by 61 percent of respondents, with just 25 percent opposed.
Meanwhile, about 57 percent of participants approved of the commission’s proposal to require every cable operator to provide at least four basic channel packages for consumers to choose from by 2017, while 25 percent disapproved of the measure.
The survey also found that approximately 73 percent of the respondents were concerned about national security breaches if China obtains information about Taiwan’s telecom network and infrastructure.
Findings also showed that 55 percent worried that the government may launch a massive surveillance program over the Internet.
Meanwhile, 63 percent of respondents expressed concern that media outlets would all be owned by one group in the future, while 58 percent said media outlets are already controlled by a few conglomerates.
In addition, 67.8 percent said that financial holding firms should not be allowed to operate media outlets and that the draft anti-media monopoly act — which has yet to be passed at the legislature — should be retroactively applied to any financial group given permission to do so in the past.
Although the government has heavily promoted policies of digital convergence, 83 percent of those polled said they had never heard of the concept, the survey found.
The survey was taken between July 15 and July 24, and collected 1,510 valid samples with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS