IPTV Controls to be Split Between SARFT and MII

While IPTV services have been up and running in China for nearly a year now, up to this point, they have been operating in a relatively unregulated gray area. However, at last month's IPTV conference held in Beijing, Mr. Yuan Min, Director of the Internet Institute of SARFT's Academy of Broadcasting Science outlined the regulatory structure the government plans to choose for issuing licenses and regulating the service.

At issue for IPTV services has been the separation of regulatory powers between the telecom and TV industries represented by the Ministry of Information Industries (MII) and SARFT respectively.

In a compromise that appears to focus solely on regulatory issues rather than actual market reality, the two bodies have agreed to divide the regulatory pie as follows:

SARFT will be in charge of licensing all IPTV services that use the TV set as the final delivery device. The MII will be in charge of licensing all IPTV services that use the home computer and other telecommunications devices as the final delivery services.

This compromise directly contradicts SARFT's own regulations on the subject which state that SARFT shall be in charge of regulating any and all content that is transmitted over any and all communications networks.

SARFT has consistently said that it retains censorship responsibility for any 'moving' content transmitted over any electronic network, and has also consistently not provided any regulatory provisions for it to do so outside the television field.

In an industry where convergence is pushing regulatory boundaries far faster than regulators can keep up, it should be remembered that China's commercial legal system as a whole is barely 20 years old and those in the media field operate within a virtual legal vacuum.

However, by simply coming up with a completely unworkable and unrealistic regulatory structure (what if I pull the IPTV cable from my television and plug it into my computer?), SARFT has shown once again that its primary reason to exist is not to push the industry forward, but rather to continue to push its agenda – to retain its political role as the TV gatekeeper to Chinese consumers in the digital era.