통신,방송 융합 추세 하의 방송시장 자유화 전망

Abstract

통신ㆍ방송 융합현상의 진전에 따라 문화적 특수성을 중심으로 정의되어 온 방송서비스산업도 이제 규제 덴 보호 논리의 관점에서 여타 산업과 유사하게 경제적 효율성의 비중이 전차 증대되는 추세이다 방송서비스의 양허대상 포함 또는 배제라는 이중구도 하의 과거 협상과 달리 WTO에서도 방송서비스의 분류체계 조정을 통해 시장개방의 돌파구를 찾는 방향으로 방송서비분야의 협상 패러다임이 변화 하려는 움직임이 나타나고 있다. 본 논문은 방송서비스분야 시장자유화에 대한 국제적 논의 및 기존 연구, 국제협상 역사 및 DDA협상 현황에 대한 분석견과에 기초하여 통신ㆍ방송 융합 환경에서의 방송서비스분야 시장자유화 전개방향과 시사점을 노출하고자 한다. 분석결과를 종합할 때, 향후 방송서비스산업에서 컨텐츠 제작을 제외한 전송분야의 시장개방이 가속화될 것으로 전망되므로 통신과 방송 네트워크를 구분하는 우리나라의 현 규제체계는 네트워크와 컨텐츠 분리 규제 중심으로의 제도개선이 시급하다.

Audio-visual services reflect the social and cultural characteristics of nations and their peoples, and are consequently regarded as being of great social and political importance. For these reasons, government regulations and public support programmes play a major role. In the context of the Uruguay Round negotiations, audio-visual industry representatives in a number of Member countries suggested that the cinema and broadcasting sectors should be excluded from the Agrement in order to protect national industries and cultures from being overwhelmed by foreign products. The argument for "cultural exemption" in trade agreements is based on the rhetoric of national cultural sovereignty, one of the key issues in the "cultural imperialism" debate of the 1970s. However, in the last decade or so, innovations in distribution and compression technology has made it possible to permit expansion of channel capacity, and there has been the transformation from a situation of spectrum scarcity to one of program scarcity. Thus, to accommodate rapid technological change and the new multimedia services, governments will need to modify their regulatory structures. In addition, for the sub-category of Radio and television transmission services, it sometimes becomes difficult to determine exactly the boundary between services classified under telecommunications and those classified under audio-visual services. In the age of convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting, it has become accepted that commitments involving programming content are classified under audio-visual services, while those purely involving the transmission of information are classified under telecommunications. This means that new regulatory regime should be introduced to meet the convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting. The convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting may produce various kinds of network-based services, and with the increased number and variety of network-based services, competition policy needs to play a much greater role in the regulation of broadcasting content. The convergence between telecommunications and broadcasting calls for re-categorization of both telecommunication operators and broadcasters in Korea. In this study, we begin by considering theoretical studies of culture and trade, international trade environment in the broad-casting industry, and classification system in telecommunications and broadcasting. Then, the implications for broadcasting policy in the age of convergence are discussed.