Chih Cheng Chen, Chuen Fa Chuang
As digital convergence becoming a global vision of information societies, how to measure its progress in a society has become an important issue, as well as to figure out the factors of blocking its progress. In this study, we employ the concepts of market and industrial competition in industrial economics to explain the meanings of digital convergence and use the econometric model to investigate the progress of two digital convergence industries, the telecommunication and cable industry, in Taiwan. In addition, we also discuss the obstacles which hinder their converging progresses. Our empirical results indicate that the competition in video market between the telecommunication and cable industries in Taiwan is still not significant but the competition in internet service provision(ISP) market between them is significant, which mean that the converging progress in video market is slower than the ISP market. The obstacles hindering the converging progress in video market are the market regulations and the terms for withdrawing from the media of parties, government, and military and must be removed to boost its convergence.