VietNamNet Bridge – The draft of a new legal document is
believed to “create an equality between content service providers (CPs) and
mobile network operators,” which is really the good news for CPs. However,
while waiting for the new regulations to take effects, CPs have been trying to
do everything they can to survive the current difficulties.
How much for the involved parties?
CPs have been repeatedly
complaining that mobile network operators have been bullying them when they
cooperate in providing content services.
Currently, mobile network
operators can enjoy the “bigger piece of the cake,” 60-70 percent of the
turnover from content services, while CPs can pocket the remaining 30-40
percent.
The Ministry of Information and
Communication (MIC) has admitted that CPs have been on a disadvantage in doing
business with mobile network operators. Since making modest profits, a lot of
CPs have to take extra jobs to earn their living. Especially, many of them
still have been found out as delivering spam messages to get additional money.
The draft decree on information
technology services compiled by MIC is believed to settle the current problem –
the unreasonable profit sharing ratio between CPs and network operators. The
draft document clearly stipulates that the profit allocation needs to go in a
transparent way, and that CPs would get the higher profit proportions than
mobile network operators.
The draft decree also stipulates
that MIC would grant or allocate prefix number bands through auctions and
competitions directly to CPs, which means that CPs would not have to ask for
the number bands from telecom groups as currently said.
The regulations, once taking
effect, would create favorable conditions for content service enterprises to
develop, because they help CPs earn bigger money and stop the reliance of CPs
on mobile network operators in terms of prefix number bands for SMS.
In general, MIC has affirmed that
the ministry now tries to set up a reasonable profit sharing profit to remove
the discriminatory treatment which has been existing between content service
enterprises and telecom groups.
CPs have to take extra jobs to survive
The information proves to be the
good news for CPs. However, they still have doubts if this would come true,
since the regulations just remain on… paper. Meanwhile, telcos repeatedly say
that the profit sharing is the own business of enterprises and involved
parties, while the State should not intervene their business deals.
Nguyen Manh Ha, General Director
of VMG, said that while waiting for the new regulations to take effects, CPs
have to do everything they can to live to wait for better things.
He said that CPs have to cut down
the budget for the media campaigns to introduce new services, while they have
been living on old services (the services through SMS like lottery, music
downloading, ring ton downloading, games…) on the basis of the existing clients
and distribution channels, even though the markets have become nearly
saturated.
“We get only 25 percent of the
profit for the new services, which is even lower than the profit ratio for old
services,” Ha said.
As such, CPs have been falling
into dilemma. The more they try to develop new services, the bigger losses they
would incur, because they have no budget for communication campaigns to develop
subscribers.
CPs have been advised to focus on
developing apps for smart phones instead of the basic services on mobile
networks. However, Ha said this is just an idea, not an effective solution to
CPs, because most of the apps for smart phones have short life circles, while
the investment rates are very high.
Buu Dien
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