VietNamNet Bridge – In the competition among IPTV service providers, the big guy VNPT (Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group) has bigger advantages than others thanks to its existing strong infrastructure for fixed telephone line and ADSL.

VNPT runs fast on IPTV race

A report shows that Vietnam now has 1 million IPTV subscribers who are using the services of VNPT, Viettel, FPT and VTC. Technologically, IPTV can bring more utilities to users than cable TV, satellite or terrestrial digital TV. Meanwhile, IPTV services are cheaper than other types of pay-TV with the subscription fee of VND60,000-135,000 a month. There are about 60-100 channels serving clients together with many added value service packages.

According to Nguyen Van Khoa, General Director of FPT Telecom, the biggest advantage of IPTV is the high interaction between service providers and clients and the capability of providing services to the individuals’ orders. Users can store their loved programs for watching later at any time.

Especially, IPTV allows users to watch programs with many kinds of terminal devices such as TV, mobile phones or tablets.

However, IPTV has two big disadvantages that it uses the fixed telephone line and it requires broadband. In other words, in order to provide high quality IPTV services, enterprises need to have good fixed line infrastructure.

Therefore, VNPT, with its existing infrastructure system, is believed to have the best conditions to provide high quality IPTV. The system allows VNPT to provide 3 services on the same transmission line, fixed telephone, ADSL and MyTV.

In fact, VNPT really wants to develop IPTV, because the TV service is believed to help VNPT retain fixed telephone subscribers. The telecom group has witnessed a high number of fixed line subscribers leaving recently in the context of the strong development of mobile phones.

Nguyen Xuan Vinh, Head of the Business Division of VNPT Thanh Hoa province, said IPTV has been developing very well in the province with some 20,000 MyTV subscribers and 10,000 LamSonTV subscribers.

VASC, a subsidiary of VNPT, the developer of MyTV service, has reported that it has got 800,000 subscribers within 3 years and 20,000 new subscribers a month now.

A senior executive of VASC noted the number of IPTV subscribers grows rapidly in the areas where the national TV wave is weak, and in remote areas, where the national TV still cannot reach to.

IPTV boom?

Despite the high number of Internet subscribers, 4.3 million, experts don’t think IPTV would be popular in the future, because the service always sets high requirements on broadband. The fixed line subscribers located over 1 kilometer far away from the technique boxes, or located on old cable line, would not be able to access the services.

To date, VNPT has some 2.7 million broadband Internet subscribers, and it expects to have 2 million MyTV subscribers at maximum.

Especially, it is not a profitable business, because MyTV can only develop in remote markets, where users register low-cost service packages.

Viettel and FPT are believed to meet difficulties in developing IPTV because of the limitations in fixed line infrastructure. Viettel now has 400,000 fixed line and ADSL subscribers, and tens of thousands of NetTV subscribers. It has 1,000-2,000 new subscribers a month.

In fact, NetTV is just a service which allows to provide more utilities to clients, while Viettel does not intend to make heavy investment in the service.

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