A lecture on ECE Laws from a Dean of Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) in one of our State Universities....
On the side of NTC:
Although NTC made a promise during one of the congressional hearings that they will issue Provisional Authority (PA) to ABS-CBN to operate as advised by congress, they cannot simply do so because PA CAN ONLY BE ISSUED IF THERE IS AN EXISTING FRANCHISE. Which in the case of ABS-CBN expired last May 4, 2020. That rule cannot simply be overturned by a mere resolution from the congress. NTC chose to break its promise than to break the law.
Is it legal for ABS-CBN to air multiple contents?
Section 2.3 of NTC MC 07-12-2014 states that
"A duly authorized DTT Broadcasting service provider SHALL HAVE THE OPTION, manifested in its application to NTC, to adopt either single or multi-program HDTV format or single or multi-program SDTV format, or any combination thereof, for its digital service."
Is it legal for ABS-CBN to engage in pay-per-view(PPV) service (KBO)?
The NTC said that in a way, there is still a violation on the part of ABS-CBN because there was no implementing rules and regulations yet and they still have to release guidelines on the PPV service.
So it is NOT ABS-CBN's fault? NTC should have released an IRR a long time ago.
On the side of the Federation of International Cable TV Associates of the Philippines (FICTAP):
They claimed that the broadcasting giant is killing the cable TV industry in the country. While its true that most if not all of ABS-CBN's broadcast offerings received the necessary government regulatory offerings, migration to Digital Terrestrial Broadcast (DTT) and the concept of Black Box and KBO is indeed killing the Cable TV Industry.
There may not be a gross violation on the part of ABS-CBN, but taking advantage of the DTT Migration because of the lack of safeguards to protect the CATV industry is pushing ABS-CBN to further inflict damage on them.
Instead of FICTAP crying foul on ABS-CBN, they should have requested the Congress or NTC to put safeguards on the DTT law to protect the CATV Industry from being overrun by DTT technology.
FICTAP is also claiming that ABS-CBN erred when they broadcast MULTIPLE contents in Digital when their franchise in Analog only allows them to broadcast a SINGLE content. Unfortunately, it is also being done by other networks.
Here is a simple explanation on the issue raised by PICTAF:
Section 5.2 Spectrum Allocation of NTC MC 07-12-2014 on Rules and Regulations for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) Broadcast Service clearly states that
"A bandwidth of 6MHz shall be assigned for each authorized DTT Broadcasting Service per service area".
The same bandwidth is used in the Analog TV. Analog is under the VHF/UHF spectrum while DTT is under UHF spectrum. Analog has 1 program per channel bandwidth while DTT can accommodate multiple programs per channel bandwidth.
This is the reason why in Analog, ABS-CBN has 2 channel bandwidth, ABS-CBN(VHF) and Studio 23(UHF) while in DTT, they have ABS-CBN 2, ABS-CBN S+A, DZMM Teleradyo, Asianovela Channel, CineMo, Jeepney TV, Movie Central, MYX, YeY, KBO, Knowledge Channel, and O Shopping all in UHF.
Is ABS-CBN killing the CATV Industry?
CATV Industry is offering a handful of local and international programs and contents on top of the free-to-air contents. Also, CATV can offer most of their programs in HD. However, we cannot deny the fact that viewers are now having several program options in DTT as compared with Analog TV and there is a big possibility that a number of viewers will shift from CATV to DTT. If the government can come up with a clear law that will prohibit DTT Networks to do pay-per-view, I don't think we will still hear noises from these CATV operators.
