French television channel France 24 has been permitted by the Ministry of Information and Communications to provide its English broadcast service to pay TV companies in Vietnam.

France 24 is the first international news broadcaster to receive such a licence in nearly three years.

France 24 broadcasts nonstop 24 hours a day to 315 million households throughout the world in French, English and Arabic.

The three language channels have 50.9 million viewers each week, according to data from 64 out of 180 countries where their programmes are broadcast.

France 24’s channels are available on a wide variety of media including satellite, cable and the Internet.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, in 2015 Vietnam’s pay TV service had 9.9 million subscribers and generated estimated revenues of more than VND9.6 trillion (US$432 million).

As of last year, there were 31 pay TV service providers in Vietnam with 73 domestic channels, 40 foreign channels and 9 domestic radio channels.

Nhan Dan