|
The Korea Broadcasting Commission is moving in to regulate new broadcasting services via the mobile wireless Internet service WiBro, and the next-generation high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) service, both to be launched this year. The new services need regulating because they provide broadcasting, the commission reasons.
Korea is unrivaled in the world in WiBro technology, which permits high-speed Internet access in a car running at 100 km/h. Successfully tested at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Busan late last year, the world¡¯s first pilot WiBro service is planned for March. But just now, with the launch of the service only two months away, the KBC has stepped in to shackle it.
If the broadcasting watchdog stops operators from providing broadcast services, which is what people are most interested in, it would make it difficult to attract subscribers and in effect ruin their business prospects. But the KBC move is a bolt from the blue not only for KT and SK Telecom, which both plan to pour hundreds of billions of won into the service, but also for manufacturers of handsets and other gadgets for WiBro. That could mean that Korea will be unable to maintain its lead in the development of WiBro technology.
We live in a digital era, where the distinction between fixed-line and wireless communication becomes meaningless and broadcasting and communications are integrated. But our government is welded to the categories of the analog era, where broadcasting was the business of the Broadcasting Commission and communication that of the Information and Communication Ministry. As a consequence, a country that has a world class high-speed Internet network and cutting-edge cell phone technology lags behind other countries in the development of technologies and services.
A case in point is Internet-protocol television (IPTV). The KBC and the ministry have been at loggerheads whether IPTV is a broadcasting or communication tool. More than 200 communication firms are engaged in IPTV around the globe, but we still don¡¯t know when we can look forward to getting in on the business.
Japan¡¯s Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Heizo Takenaka, the man in charge of regulating broadcasting and communications, made a chilling remark referring to Apple¡¯s iPod, the world¡¯s best-selling MP3 player. ¡°Despite having developed related technology earlier, Japan failed to commercialize it because of unnecessary rules and regulations," he said. Korea now blindly follows Japan¡¯s footsteps into failure.
|
