Telecom & Media Symposium Highlights November 26, 2014

Opportunities & Challenges for Taiwan’s OTT Industry

Sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent & Microsoft Taiwan

OTT (Over the Top Content)

In broadcasting, over-the-top content (OTT) refers to delivery of audio, video, and other media over the Internet without the involvement of a multiple-system operator in

the control or distribution of the content.

“If you ask who is in control of the internet, you get no answer, because in Taiwan no one is in charge. The internet is going to change the whole TV sector and the telecom sector, it’s all going to be changed by OTT.”

Dr. Huang YennunDeputy Executive secretary, Board of Science and Technology, Executive Yuan

Dr. Kwan Shang-renAssociate professor, department of radio, television and film, school of journalism and communication and director of science communication R&D center, Shih Hsin University

“We need to not only look into the content, but we need to look into the channel design. In the future cloud TV will bring hundreds and thousands of channels, and we know it’s the channels that have good brands and niches that can win.

Short form modular TV is better suited for the mobile viewing environment.”

Dr. Chen Shin-horngResearch fellow, director of the second research division, Chung-hua institution for Economic Research (CIER), Taipei

“If you look at the broadcasting sector, for the last few years, they have devoted a lot to unpacking the digital technologies, but so far the growth rate has been very limited.

If you look at the telecom sector, the performance is even worse.

OTT is all around us, but where is our share?”

Mr. Joe Welch Senior Vice President, government relations, Asia, 21st Century fox

“We send takedown notices all over the world… and they just throw our notice away. It’s a joke. Why? This system of notice and takedown was created in 1998, and it’s 2014.

We need more clever approaches. When a country does what needs to be done so that piracy drops, like the UK and South Korea have done, do legitimate OTT services prosper? Of course the answer is yes!”

Mr. Chou Wang-tunDirector, marketing and operations, Microsoft Taiwan

“To cover the Sochi Olympics, (Microsoft) had only 18 days to generate more than 10,000 hours of digital content—triple the amount from the Vancouver Olympics only four years ago … This is the first time to deliver this content through these new technologies, but we found that no one technology, and no one standard, could deliver all of this content to all platforms.

We discovered that the technology was ready, but the service was not.”.