HONG KONG, December 5, 2006–The convergence of telecommunications and media is posing problem for communications regulators all over the world, and many of them swapped stories here about the best way to cope with rapid technological change.
Most government panelists participating in two morning sessions at the International Telecommunications Union’s Telecom World conference here agreed on the need for a unified communications authority.
But they differed after whether competition policy could prove adequate to dealing with issues of telecommunications and media. In other words, would the need for communications regulation fade over time?
Officials from France and Hong Kong are both in the midst of re-evaluating their existing regulatory structures, which include two separate agencies. In each case, one agency is charged with overseeing broadcasting, and the other agency oversees telephone communications.
But as telephone companies enter television, and broadcasters engage in the transmission of Internet data, the line between industries has been dramatically blurred, these regulators said.
“Existing regulation is likely to be out of date in the next-generation environment” of new technologies, said M. H. Au, director-general of communications for the government on Hong Kong. Similarly, high speed Internet services by mobile services and other wireless carriers is forcing a change by the government.
Hong Kong is on track to put broadcasting under the authority of Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA), said Au, but a change in law is necessary. He said he expected it to happen in the first half of 2007.
“This is a very tough question about convergence for regulators,” said Michel Feneyrol, a commissioner at ARCEP, the French telecommunications and postal regulator.
Feneyrol said that ARCEP and a separate agency responsible for broadcasting have clashed over issues like frequency allocation. The telecom regulator sought to have frequencies allocated to wireless carriers, while the broadcasting regular sought them for mobile television.
“My feeling is that we have in France to evolve” toward a common agency, said Feneyrol.
Many countries, including Malaysia, Lithuania, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, have in recent years established an independent agency similar to United States’ Federal Communications Commission: one with jurisdiction over all facets of communication, whether over wires or airwaves.
Because of the greater government involvement traditionally in telephone and broadcast businesses outside of the U.S., many countries had separate agencies for the two fields.
Until February, Taiwan had a similar split, said Yu-Li Liu, a commissioner with the National Communications Commission, which was formed by a union of two former agencies. In addition to resolving problems of convergence, she said the union eliminated conflicts of interest. Liu was a member of the audience and not a panelist at the conference here, and she spoke up during the question and answer session.
“NCC is independent from the political powers and business sectors as well,” Liu said in an interview. “We don’t own any shares of any companies. But in the past, the former regulator owned 41 percent of the [government-owned] telecom company. And for broadcasting, the former deputy-general of the [television regulator] was the spokesman for [Taiwan’s] premier.”
Lim Keng Yaik, Minister of Energy, Water and Communications for Malaysia, said that having a unified agency gave a “wide scope [to] allow the regulator to play a development role which he would not be able to do as effectively otherwise.”
Some disagreement came between panelists over the appropriate long-term role for such converged regulatory authorities.
Bill Brown is the executive director of the Competition Regulatory Authority for Jersey, a territory of U.K. off the coast of France which has responsibility for telecom regulation and competition policy. On most issues, he said, antitrust law could take the place of regulation.
With the possible exception of interconnection requirements, “Most telecom regulators would take the view that ultimately, if their plans are going smoothing, the need for regulation should disappear,” Brown said.
But Yaik disagreed. He defended a variety of restrictions on free speech as necessary for social harmony. “In Malaysia, you may not have sedition [or hate speech], because we cannot afford having people of different races shouting at each other, and calling each other names,” he said. “That is what we had in 1969, and we had racial riots.”
But extending broadcast restrictions to the Internet has been difficult, Yaik said. While he said he had the authority to pull the broadcast license of anyone violating what he called the government’s “self-censorship” rules, he said his ministry has not attempted to censor Internet content by local or international Web users.
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