AmCham arrow Publications arrow Topics Archive arrow Topics Archive 2005 arrow Vol.35- No.12 arrow Editorial: A Fatally Flawed NCC
Editorial: A Fatally Flawed NCC PDF Print E-mail

The basic purpose of establishing a National Communications Commission (NCC) was to create a rigorously independent and impartial regulatory body. But the process by which it has been formed became so highly politicized that the NCC itself now appears badly tarnished by partisanship.

The original notion was to create a regulator modeled on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, whose generally professionally minded commissioners are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Although the FCC has had its critics, it has never become the focus of heated contention between Democrats and Republicans. In Taiwan, however, the bitterness of the blue-green struggle has caused narrow party interests to win out over the broader public good. Both sides feared that the other would dominate the commission as a lever to control domestic media for political gain.

 

Following even more unseemly brawling than usual, the Legislative Yuan instituted a system of appointing commissioners through a review panel, with both the nominees and reviewers chosen mainly by the political parties based on their proportion of legislative seats. Inevitably the voting to choose the 13 commissioners went chiefly according to party lines. One of those selected was so appalled by the process and pessimistic about what it foretells for the workings of the NCC that he promptly submitted his resignation before even being sworn in.

International players in the telecom and media industries have been equally dismayed by these developments, which they see as hindering emergence of the stable, professional regulatory environment they had anticipated. Investment that might have been attracted to Taiwan, lured by the prospect that the island could serve as a business-development center for the broader Chinese-language market, may now be lost to other locations, including cities in China.

A second objective in forming the NCC was to provide Taiwan with an effective "convergent regulator" to oversee the increasingly intertwined telecom and broadcasting industries. But the recent "TVBS controversy" over restrictions on "foreign" (meaning Chinese-backed) investment and how they should be enforced caused public discussion on the selection of NCC commissioners to center almost exclusively on broadcasting issues - neglecting crucial questions about the kind of telecom infrastructure Taiwan needs for the future. In addition, most of the commissioners appointed come from a broadcasting background, with relatively little expertise in telecom technology, depriving the NCC of needed balance in handling questions of convergence.

Given these grave weaknesses, the NCC as now constituted will have difficulty making policy decisions fast enough to meet the swift pace of business change - in which case it should stand aside and let the market decide. The longer-term solution must be amendment of the law to permit the commission to be reorganized on more rational grounds. AmCham therefore calls on the political leadership in both camps to go back to the drawing boards to devise a new system to assure creation of a genuinely non-political NCC. The stakes are too large to stumble along with an ineffectual regulator in charge.
 
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