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.
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
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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