VietNamNet Bridge – Pay-TV groups have got harassed about the increasingly high percentage of “virtual” and left subscribers.

The competition among pay-TV groups has become stiffer as they try to cut down the subscription fees further to attract more clients before Viettel, a big guy in the telecom sector, jumps into the pay-TV market in two months.

Le Dinh Nhan in Thanh Xuan district in Hanoi, said he has stopped using VTVcab service to become a subscriber of Saigontourist (SCTV) for the last two months. He has to pay lower for SCTV services to enjoy better services with more TV channels and high quality images.

SCTV now offers services at the lowest monthly subscription in the market, VND60,000. Meanwhile, HCATV VND80,000 and VTVcab VND110,000.

In the past, SCTV only dominated the southern market, while the Hanoi market was controlled by VTVcab and HCATV. However, SCTV, in its plan to conquer the northern market with the shocking promotion campaigns, has changed the situation. A lot of VTVcab’s and HCATV’s subscribers have shifted to use SCTV services.

The leave of subscribers has made pay-TV groups worried stiff. According to VTC Digital, though it, for the first time since it began providing services in 2009, made a profit of VND50 billion form satellite TV, it has been meeting big difficulties in developing subscribers.

Hoang Le Son, VTC Digital’s Director, said in 2013, the company failed to implement the task of curbing the proportion of left subscribers at less 20 percent. The actual figure reached over 30 percent, even though VTC offered a lot of preferences to retain clients.

VTC Digital offered subscription fees, cut down the STB price by nearly 50 percent, provided additional service packages. However, the number of new subscribers was just enough to offset the number of left subscribers.

According to Le Dinh Cuong, Deputy Secretary and Chair of the Pay-TV Association, in 2013, K+ satellite TV service provider spent $30 million on the UK Premier League TV right. When the premier league neared, it unexpectedly saw the leave of 50,000 subscribers. Despite the great efforts to retain clients and attractive preferences, the television could only get back 30,000 subscribers.

Though spending a lot of money to develop TV programs, the number of K+’s subscribers just stays around 400,000.

VNPT’s IPTV MyTV service got 200,000 more subscribers in 2013, raising the total number of subscribers to 800,000. However, Huynh Ngoc Tuan, Director of VASC, MyTV is also facing the increasingly high number of left subscribers. This has forced VASC to implement some policies to retain subscribers.

The problem of analog cable TVs not only lies in the high percentage of left subscribers, but also in the high number of virtual subscribers, i.e. the subscribers from which televisions cannot collect fees though they still use TV signals.

According to Cuong, the “virtual subscribers once were the “real” subscribers. They later stopped using the services, but still connect the transmission lines to continue using services.

Also according to Cuong, the number of virtual subscribers is very big, which has been a problem faced by all analog cable TV groups, including SCTV, VTVcab, HCATV, HCTV for the last three years.

HCATV once reportedly had 30 percent of subscribers being “virtual,” while VTVcab 32 percent.

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