Chunghwa Telecom encounters hurdles to Olympics coverage

July 18, 2008 - Taiwanese telco Chunghwa Telecom has encountered regulatory problems as it prepares to broadcast this year's Beijing Olympic Games, reports local news portal DigiTimes, despite having already purchased exclusive rights to broadcast the event in Taiwan.

The country's National Communications Commission (NCC) does not allow Chunghwa Telecom to directly provide content for its "Multimedia on Demand" IPTV service, in order to ensure that the platform remains an open platform open for use by all channel operators and content providers, and the NCC has thus judged that live broadcast of the Olympics is akin to CHT operating a sports channel.

The NCC has therefore recommended three possible alternatives, namely: that another company, in which the telco does not have a stake, replaces Chunghwa to handle the broadcast; that Chunghwa Telecom sells its stake in Elta Technology, which is conducting the broadcast for Chunghwa; or that the live broadcast is changed to delivery of a near on-demand or delayed live broadcast.