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.
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