VietNamNet Bridge – In order to be able to provide OTT (over the top) services in Vietnam, foreign firms have to fulfill “impossible missions”.

Quy Nguyen is a Vietnamese, but he usually travels between Hanoi and Guangzhou, China, for business.

When he is in Vietnam, he can contact his Chinese partners in Guangzhou with WeChat. “WeChat is the only OTT app Guangzhou people can use,” he explained.

Nguyen said due to Chinese characters, it always takes a lot of time to write text messages. Therefore, to communicate with Chinese partners, he would rather make calls or send voice messages.

Meanwhile, Nguyen has to contact partners in the US via Line. “Nine out of every 10 partners I need to contact in the US use Line,” he said.

Nguyen installs other OTT apps including Viber and Zalo to communicate with Vietnamese.

What will happen if the OTT apps cannot be used anymore? Nguyen said he would have to contact partners via emails.

“It will be really terrible if A prohibits B’s services and then B prohibits A’s OTT apps,” he said.

In early November, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) opened the draft circular on management over internet-based telecommunication services for public opinion.

Under the draft circular, foreign firms would be allowed to provide OTT apps in Vietnam if they can satisfy requirements which, in the eyes of analysts, are “impossible missions”.

The draft circular, for example, says that service providers must set up at least one server system in Vietnam to provide the app with more than one million users (it is not clear the users are in Vietnam or all over the world). The requirement aims to improve the watchdog agency’s management.

In addition, foreign OTT app providers must cooperate with Vietnamese telcos in order to set up their servers in Vietnam.

Some analysts commented that they doubted the watchdog agency had protected Vietnamese OTT service providers by giving them advantages over foreign rivals.

However, Nguyen Tu Hoang, deputy chair of BKAV, a large technology group, denied that MIC tried to protect local service providers, saying that it is necessary to put OTT apps, like traditional telecommunication services, under control.

Hoang Anh Tu, a businessman, however, disagrees with Hoang. He, on one hand, agrees that it is necessary to keep a keen eye on OTT apps, and on the other hand, said the management methods must be “reasonable” to create a fair playing field for both domestic and foreign OTT service providers.

Meanwhile, Tu commented, the MIC’s draft circular, though saying that telcos must not block OTT services and hinder OTT app development, gives telcos too much power to compete with OTT app providers.

Telcos, for example, have priority in call quality, have the right to refuse to cooperate with OTT app providers, and the right to design internet service packages with or without apps, at different levels of charges and quality.

“As such, OTT app providers may suffer from discriminatory treatment,” Tu said.