The National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday it was planning to conduct experiments offering digital cable TV services nationwide before deciding on how to implement the policy.
The commission wants cable TV services digitized by 2013 after which it will stop analog transmissions.
“Less than 50 percent of the nation’s cable television is digitized, and the commission wants to know why progress is so slow,” NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said. “Through the experiments, we want to identify what the real problems are. We don’t want to just hear one side of the story from the cable TV operators.”
Chen said that the commission would examine the results of the experiments before promoting digital cable TV services nationwide. He also said they would ask operators to submit a timeline detailing the implementation of the switchover.
Tsai Kuo-tung (蔡國棟), chief of the NCC’s competitive policy division, said the commission would soon promulgate the rules governing the execution of the experiments.
“Cable operators can choose whether they want to participate in the experiment or not,” Tsai said.
“If they choose to participate, they can propose where and how the experiments should be conducted. The commission will evaluate whether the projects are viable, make suggestions and come up with incentives for customers to switch from analog services to digital services,” he said.
“We hope that the experiments will tell us whether cable TV operators have tried hard enough to promote the digital services or whether customers are simply not motivated to make the switch,” Tsai said.
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
The lowest temperature in a low-lying area recorded early yesterday morning was in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館), at 6.8°C, due to a strong cold air mass and the effect of radiative cooling, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. In other areas, Chiayi’s East District (東區) recorded a low of 8.2°C and Yunlin County’s Huwei Township (虎尾) recorded 8.5°C, CWA data showed. The cold air mass was at its strongest from Saturday night to the early hours of yesterday. It brought temperatures down to 9°C to 11°C in areas across the nation and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties,
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
STAY VIGILANT: When experiencing symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, such as dizziness or fatigue, near a water heater, open windows and doors to ventilate the area Rooftop flue water heaters should only be installed outdoors or in properly ventilated areas to prevent toxic gas from building up, the Yilan County Fire Department said, after a man in Taipei died of carbon monoxide poisoning on Monday last week. The 39-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳), an assistant professor at Providence University in Taichung, was at his Taipei home for the holidays when the incident occurred, news reports said. He was taking a shower in the bathroom of a rooftop addition when carbon monoxide — a poisonous byproduct of combustion — leaked from a water heater installed in a poorly ventilated
RSS