VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) is considering applying necessary management measures to prevent the unhealthy competition in the telecom market raised with the appearance of messaging, calling software via wifi and 3G.

Pham Hong Hai, Director of the Telecommunication Agency, an arm of MIC, said the agency would organize a workshop in some days to discuss the measures to tighten control over the OTT services (over the top content) which allow to send messages and make calls free of charge via wifi and 3G, such as Viber, Whatsapp.

Hai said that the software products have become a big threat to telcos in particular and the telecom and broadcasting industry in general.

At present, basic telecom services, including phone calls, SMS and television make up 80 percent of total revenue of telcos, about 100 trillion dong. Meanwhile, the services have been provided free of charge through Internet by foreign companies.

In fact, the foreign companies provide the software free of charge so as to have the opportunities to provide other non-telecom services.

“It is very difficult to control the free messages and calls made via wifi and 3G in terms of security,” said Nguyen Manh Hung, Deputy General Director of Viettel, one of the three biggest telecom groups in Vietnam.

“MIC should set up reasonable policies to tightly control OTT services. The policies should be designed in a way which do not hamper the development of the services, but it needs to ensure the sustainable development of the telecom, information technology and television industries,” Hung added.

It happens in many countries in the world that OTT services provided by foreign giants like Google or Yahoo have deprived the local telcos’ revenue from basic telecom services (call, SMS). As a result, local telcos have become the hired workers for the giants.

Hai of MIC has warned that this may happen in Vietnam as well, calling on the state to apply reasonable policies to control this.

Arab countries have absolutely prohibited the use of Viber software. Meanwhile, the US and European countries have encouraged people to use the software.

“We would organize workshops to discuss the issue to find out reasonable policies for Vietnam,” Hai said.

Vietnamese have got more familiar to the software pieces that allow making calls free of charge. The most popular ones are Whatsapp, Viber, Line or made-in-Vietnam products such as Zalo (VNG), FPT Chat (FPT).

Users just need to access to Appstore or Google Play to download the software, then enter the phone numbers. The phones would automatically search in the phone book the friends who have been using the same apps, then users would be make calls or send messages to each other free of charge through Internet.

Smart phone manufacturers have tried to make their products more attractive to users by installing free messaging software in their products in order to provide more utilities to users. Blackberry, for example, has Blackberry Messenger, while Apple has Facetime and Samsung has ChatOn.

Nguyen Minh Duc from BKAV, a well-known Internet security service provider, said the above said software pieces access Internet through IP addresses, therefore, users would meet the same risks as the risks for normal computers.

When exchanging data through public wifi networks, if the messaging or calling messages are not coded well, the conversations would be tapped.

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