Media rating, research firms to be regulated via app licences
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New rule will be drafted over next six months; 3 categories planned: NBTC
The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission will regulate media-research and audience-measurement companies via its application-provider licences, the head of the NBTC’s broadcasting committee said yesterday.
Natee Sukonrat, chairman of the committee, said it had approved in principle an additional regulation that will be implemented under the general rules governing licences for radio and TV services.
Officials at the NBTC office now will draft further details of this regulation and then hand the draft back to the committee.
“The process may take six months or more,” Natee said.
The new regulation will recognise three categories of application service providers.
The first category will be companies that provide short messaging service (SMS) and electronic voting systems for television and radio broadcasters.
The second will be companies that provide special services via broadcasting networks. These services include home shopping, triple-play, video-on-demand and interactive TV.
The third category will be designed to govern media-research and audience-measurement companies such as AGB Nielsen.
Meanwhile, the broadcasting panel also approved 16 models of digital TV set-top boxes and six models of television sets with built-in tuners, or integrated digital TV (iDTV) sets.
The 16 approved boxes are from ALK International, Soken Electronics (Thailand), Homecast (Thailand), Thai Satellite Cable, Samart Engineer, Topfield (Thailand), AE Technology, Tatung (Thailand) and Planet Communication Asia.
The six approved iDTV sets are from Provision Thai, Thai Samsung Electronics and Sharp Thai.
Natee said that after the approval, the manufacturers would be able to put those models on store shelves immediately.
This would help shorten the transition from analog to digital terrestrial TV broadcasting era, he said.
