DVC with Mastel and FCC on TV Digitalization

The US-ASEAN Business Council (Council) and Mastel officially entrenched their partnership by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, in Jakarta on November 13, 2015. Signed by the Council’s President & CEO, Alexander Feldman and Mastel’s Chairman Kristiono the ceremony was witnessed by members of both the American and Indonesian business communities and governments, including U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Robert Blake and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Rudiantara of Indonesia. The areas of cooperation in the MOU includes the sharing of work for promoting technology transfer, innovation, policy and regulatory study and industrial cooperation between the United States and Indonesia as well as providing industrial technology-related education/knowledge sharing and promotion through each organization.

As a concrete follow up to the MOU, US-ABC and MASTEL agreed to co-organize knowledge sharing sessions through video conference between government and private sector stakeholders in Indonesia as well as in the US. Through the knowledge sharing session, Indonesian stakeholders can learn from the experience of the US government in policy making process in the ICT sector.

This first knowledge sharing session is expected to cover how the US government managed the process of TV digitalization, the principles used by the US government as guidelines in implementing the TV digitalization process, considerations in making decisions and regulations with regards to the digitalization process to users, compensations to users and industry players, treatment to TV broadcasters, financial support from the government. The most crucial thing to cover is how the US government manage the additional spectrum of frequency resulted from the digitalization process (digital dividend) – whether some were returned to TV broadcasters and some to telecommunication industry or whether all are given to the telecommunication industry.

During the session, three speakers from FCC will deliver presentations on three distinct aspects of the DTV transition: engineering/technical, policy/regulatory, and consumer education and outreach, followed by Q&A.