IPTV Confusion Continues

BEIJING --- Following a number of pronouncements made from SARFT and the MII concerning their joint work to develop China's IPTV industry (CMM Passim), the situation at the start of 2006 points to another year of stalled initiatives and near complete lack of regulatory coordination.

Indeed, a number of companies interviewed by CMMI in recent months have simply given up waiting for a coherent, coordinated policy to come out of SARFT and the MII and are biding time until 2007, when the next round of ministry shuffling will occur (CMM Passim).

The companies had generally given up on efforts to obtain a license from SARFT; or in many cases trying to approach SARFT at all.

The hope on the part of IPTV and other online content providers is that a unified regulator covering both telecom, broadcast and telephony will be created (in other words, SARFT gets subsumed into the MII).

SARFT has not done itself any favors in the IPTV business by simply stating over and over again that any IPTV operators must be licensed by SARFT and then not providing such companies with any mechanism to obtain a license.

Behind the lack of any coherent IPTV licensing strategy is a struggle behind closed doors. Many within SARFT view IPTV as competitive to digital television, which SARFT is heavily invested in promoting and developing.

IPTV is seen as an end-run around the digital broadcasting infrastructure, which must be avoided at all costs. However, the MII as an institution is simply too powerful for SARFT to oppose directly, so the strategy seems to be one of insuring SARFT is a licensing body for IPTV, issuing only one license at national level, but shutting down IPTV initiatives engaged in by that licensed company at local levels (See Policy & Regulation 2.3 below).

Until there is a unified regulatory structure where one body has control over both the pipes and the content, IPTV initiatives in China will simply continue to exist in a policy purgatory: neither completely legal or illegal. While China generally does have a predilection for experimentation prior to regulation, there has been plenty of time for this in the IPTV field, and the continued gray market situation serves no one's interests anymore.