VietNamNet Bridge – Some telecom conglomerates have revealed
their plans to jump into the pay-TV market. They might not anticipate the
barriers they would meet when implementing the plan.
The Vietnam National Television
(VTV), the Vietnam Pay-TV Association, VCTV, SCTV all have unanimously lodged
petition to the Central Propaganda Committee and the Ministry of Information
and Communication about the issues relating to the pay-TV market.
The television service providers
wrote that they feel too surprised when hearing about the business plans that
they believe “would cause the big waste of the state’s money.”
The “business plans” here means
the plans to join the pay-TV market followed by some economic groups. The
service providers believe that the pay-TV market has become saturated, while
state owned economic groups have been told to withdraw their investment capital
from non-core business fields. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to let some
of the economic groups to inject money in the pay-TV market, the business field
which has no relation to their main business activities.
According to VTV, the Vietnamese
pay-TV market remains small, while the increase of new subscribers has slowed
down recently, since VSTV’s satellite TV (K+), VTC and HTV channels have
covered all the areas of the country, satisfying the demand of different
classes of people.
Meanwhile, Vietnam also has high
quality digital terrestrial TV with DVB-T2 technology provided by VTC, VTV and
AVG which has large coverage, reasonable service fee and comes in line with the
digitalization trend in the television technology.
There are also at least two cable
networks in cities, towns and lowland provinces already, which can satisfy the
diversified demand of high income earners. MyTV of VNPT, NetTV of Viettel and
iTV of FPT have also reached out to most of the cities, towns throughout the
country.
In its document sent to the
relevant agencies, VTV affirms that it would be unreasonable to allow Viettel,
VNPT and FPT – the big economic groups – to jump into the cable TV market, once
the government is now calling to restrict the investments in non-core business
fields.
Especially, the most important
reason VTV has cited to prove that the economic groups should not be licensed
to join the market is that the groups do not have advantages in producing
contents – the factor that decides the success of pay-TV service.
On August 23, 2012, the Vietnam
Pay-TV Association also sent a document to the Ministry of Information and
Communication, asking the watchdog agency not to grant licenses for HFC network
to the enterprises.
The association pointed out that
it would cost trillions of dong to build up a new TV network, while it would
take a long time to take the investment capital back. Moreover, the existence
of too many networks would spoil the urban landscapes, while causing the
electricity waste.
Regarding the production of the
contents for TV programs, analysts have warned that TV service providers would
compete with each other to scramble for the copyright of sports and
entertainment shows from foreign suppliers, which would lead to the escalation
of the required royalties, thus leading to the waste of foreign currencies and
harming the national economy.
Therefore, the existing TV
service providers have a common voice that it would be better not to grant
licenses for cable TV service to some economic groups, while encouraging the
enterprises to push up the development of licensed IPTV service, improve
telecom services and make software products.
These are the very important
fields needed to develop to serve the industrialization and modernization
process, and of course, these are the advantageous fields of Viettel, VNPT and
FPT. Meanwhile, producing TV programs are not the advantages of the enterprises.
Compiled by C. V
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