VietNamNet Bridge – None of the OTT (over the top) TV service providers are dreaming of making profits at a time when they must compete with both illegal services and social networks.

The fledgling Vietnamese OTT TV market has gathered many big players. These include, on Google’s and Apple’s stores alone, VTV Plus of VTVcab, VTC Play of VTC, FPT Play of FPT and MyTV Net of MyTV.

Meanwhile, a senior executive of SCTV said the television channel has successfully tested its OTT TV service and is going to provide OTT and VOD TV services to users soon.

To date, only K+, HCATV and HCTV, the three well known television brands, have not made any official statements about the possibility of joining the market.

However, K+ has affirmed that it is really interested in OTT TV service, which is believed to be an inevitable trend.

However, K+ is a joint venture between a Vietnamese and a foreign partner, and is only  allowed to provide satellite TV services only.

This means that if K+ wants to jump into the OTT TV service market, it will need to get consent from the foreign partner and obtain a license for OTT TV service from Vietnamese agencies.

Cao Van Liet, CEO of K+, has affirmed that the firm is willing to cooperate with other partners to provide the TV program content owned by K+ to users through OTT protocol.

As for the authentic OTT technology, TV apps can automatically recognize the users’ devices to choose suitable signals and resolution, thus allowing users to watch TV at the highest possible quality, no matter where the users are.

One just needs to install apps and have an internet connection to be able to turn all kinds of screens of smartphones, tablets, personal computers, laptops, Android TV Box or SmartTV into TV screens.

Making profits

The foreseeable rise of OTT TV market explains why television channels all are rushing to join the market. However, they all have said they still cannot make money from the OTT TV service.

What the they are trying to do now is to attract as many subscribers as possible and familiarize people with OTT TV. They do not intend to charge users fees at this moment, while they manage to cover production costs with ad fees.

VTV Plus tried to collect fees in July 2013, but the plan failed. Vietnamese would rather use illegal low-quality services than pay for high-quality services, though the fees were designed in a very flexible way allowing users to pay monthly, weekly, daily or pay for the content. Meanwhile, long term subscribers have to pay VND30,000-40,000 only a month.

Pham Anh Chien, CEO of Medianet, the firm that cooperates with VTVcab to provide VTV Plus service, admitted that though VTVcab has several million subscribers, very few of them register for pay-services.

MyTV Net has recently tried to collect fees with two service packages, while VTC has revealed it is going to charge VTC Play’s users a fee. However, Son said VTC still needs to develop technical solutions to upgrade VTC Play.

Buu Dien/VNN