American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Economic Section Chief Jeffrey Horwitz and colleagues, on September 1, 2016, paid a courtesy call to Chairperson Chan, Ting-I to congratulate her on her becoming Chairperson of NCC. They took the opportunity to exchange views on various issues of communications, such as the vision of NCC, OTT regulation, media monopoly, and the digital convergence bill.
　　Other AIT officials present were Economic Officer Kris Kvols, Economic Officer Hank Li, Spokesperson Sonia Urbom and Senior Media Analyst Irene Chen.
　　Regarding the vision of NCC, Chairperson Chan explained how NCC will continue to promote digital convergence as a means of encouraging the development of more diversified contents and services. She also outlined how the NCC is responsible for actively facilitating the infrastructure and environment for the digital economy, in such areas as broadband universal service, increasing the transmission quality, rationalizing tariffs, and improving undersea cables and interconnections. When the bottom layer of infrastructure is sound, the upper layer of content and application services can prosper.
　　As to AIT’s inquiry of OTT regulation, Chairperson Chan mentioned that there is no single competent authority regulating the Internet in Taiwan; instead, aspects of Internet are regulated by a broad range of authorities. NCC plans to propose certain principles for Internet governance; nevertheless, that will not mean that NCC will be the authority responsible for Internet, but will help reach the consensus and direction for Internet development. NCC is committed to establishing infrastructure based on its responsibilities and the ‘Digital Communications Act,’ currently being drafted by NCC, does encompass the spirit of light touch, self-regulation and Internet governance.
　　The issue of media monopoly in Taiwan was also one of the issues discussed. Chairperson Chan mentioned the consumers’ choice is the focus to be discussed. Media monopoly also involves issues of media investment and acquisition and when NCC examines the application of media acquisition, the elements for assessment include market impact, content diversity, freedom of speech, etc.
　　With regard to the development of the digital convergence bill, Chairperson Chan pointed out that NCC is drafting the Digital Communications Act and the Telecommunications Management Act. NCC will make the drafts public so as to enable the public the opportunity to provide feedback. An AIT official replied that the transparency mechanism to allow public comment is an issue that US also places great importance on. In addition, AIT official mentioned that US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) emphasizes the issue of an open Internet. Chairperson Chan said that NCC is examining this issue, and perhaps will discuss this issue with outside on the Executive Yuan online platform ‘v Taiwan’ in the future.