VietNamNet Bridge – A cutthroat competition is believed to occur in the pay-TV market in 2013, when telecom groups jump into the market and force the service fees down.



About 50 brands have been providing pay-TV services in Vietnam, including the big guys HCaTV, VTC, HTVC, VSTV (K+), or SCTV, which have 4.5 million subscribers of satellite TV, IPTV and cable TV, mostly located in urban areas.

In 2012, some big enterprises applied to the Ministry of Information and Communication for the right to join the market. These include the big names in the telecom sector such as the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT), FPT Telecom and Viettel.

The telecom groups, once joining the market, would become the redoubtable rivals to the existing TV service providers. Analysts believe that the telcos, with the great advantage in the transmission network, would be able to provide services at higher quality and more reasonable fees.

Fearing that the market would fall into the hands of telecom groups, the biggest TV service providers including VTV, SCTV and the Vietnam Pay-TV Association sent documents to the management agencies, asking to prevent telcos to jump into the pay-TV market.

The big guys said that while attempting to jump into unfamiliar non-core business fields, telcos would go contrary to the government policy that enterprises need to gather their strength on their main business activities. If they inject money in the pay-TV market, this would be a big waste of resources and create unhealthy competition.

Nguyen Van Hai, Director of VDC, also thinks that the competition would become stiffer when telcos, with their great advantages in infrastructure, distribution channels and advanced technologies, “participate in the war.” However, Hai believes that the competition in the pay-TV market still is not as stiff as thought.

Meanwhile, President and CEO of FPT - Truong Gia Binh, has noted that the pay-TV market is not open enough. He said that if prohibiting telcos to provide TV services, the services would be more costly, while the market would not develop in the right way.

It is now the age when different services can be provided with the same transmission lines. Therefore, the enterprises which provide only one service on the infrastructure system would not be able to exist.

Experts have also pointed out that if a cable line is reserved for only one service, then Vietnam would need so many transmission lines and it would have to spend big money to develop the infrastructure, which would lead to the stagnation of the market development.

Deputy General Director of the military telecom group Viettel - Nguyen Manh Hung, has affirmed that with the existing fiber cable system reaching out to ever commune, it would allow to reduce the investment costs by two or three times. This would help make pay-TV more popular to people and reachable to remote and mountainous areas.

No official decision has been made about whether to allow telcos to join the pay-TV market. However, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan said at a recent conference, that capable enterprises need to be given favorable conditions to provide new services and requested management agencies to discuss the measures to help them.

Regarding the case of Viettel, which asked for the permission to provide pay-TV services a long time ago but has not received replies from the watchdog agency, Nhan instructed the agency to give the final answer to Viettel and report to the Prime Minister in February 2013.

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