According to Multimedia Research Group, the number of IPTV subscribers worldwide may reach 92.8 million by 2012 (the figure was 24 million in 2008), while the annual growth rate would be 31 percent. Of these, the number of subscribers in Asia would reach 40 million by 2012, which is equal to that of Europe, while the figure was 8 million by the end of 2008.
In Vietnam, FPT Telecom is considered the pioneer in commercializing IPTV services in the country. Since March 1, 2006, FPT Telecom began officially provided IPTV services under the name of iTV, which was then later named into OneTV in 2011.
On May 12, 2009, VTC Digicom, in cooperation with Hai Phong Telecom, launched IPTV services in Hai Phong City. VTC Digicom has also joined forces with local telcos to provide services in six more provinces, including Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ninh Binh, Binh Duong and Hue City.
Meanwhile, VASC Company, a subsidiary of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) began running IPTV in a trial basis in 2008, and then has been officially providing IPTV nationwide since 2009, under the brand MyTV.
According to Nguyen Van Hai, Director of VASC, with the high growth of the number of subscribers year after year, MyTV has obtained 500,000 subscribers after two years of providing the services. Especially, the proportion of left subscribers is very small, i.e…only one or two subscribers leave in every 1000 subscribers.
“It is estimated that MyTV has 100 new subscribers every day and 30,000 subscribers every month. The average revenue per subscriber is 70,000 dong,” Hai said.
He added that MyTV has 90 TV channels, including 13 HD channels and on-demand services, including feature films, music, karaoke, games, sports, reading books, education and healthcare.
The representative of FPT Telecom said that its oneTV has 74 channels and many other types of services, including replay TV (users can replay programs within 48 hours), video on demand, programs for children, English for children, music and art performance…
The representative said that the number of subscribers of OneTV has reached over 30,000, while the figure is expected to rise to 70,000 by the end of 2011. Regarding the revenue, the package service fees are from 40,000 to 80,000 dong a month, depending on the localities. FPT Telecom has been trying to collect 30,000 dong more from subscribers on their use other kinds of services.
Meanwhile, Viettel’s IPTV under the NetTV brand has got 15,000 subscribers, while the company hopes to obtain 300,000 subscribers in the next few years. The subscribers are mostly from southern provinces such as Tay Ninh, Binh Duong and Can Tho, where cable TV has not developed, instead of big cities like Hanoi or HCM City.
The representative of FPT Telecom said that though pioneering in the IPTV market, it has realized that IPTV did not bring big profit and had not paid much attention to developing the services since 2008.
Later, in 2010, FPT Telecom reconsidered the market performance and decided that the IPTV market would really witness a boom after three more years. However, a lot of good conditions which back up the development of the IPTV have appeared: terminal devices for IPTV have become cheaper, while the legal framework on paid-TV has been issued which would help people get familiar to paid-TV, while the technical infrastructure has become good enough to run IPTV with stable quality.
Meanwhile, experts say they have every reason to believe that the IPTV market would boom in just two years instead of three.
Buu Dien
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