VietNamNet Bridge – OTT (over the top) has been heating not only telecom groups, but televisions as well. Believing that OTT is an irresistible trend, television service providers have jumped into the market, but none of them has made profit on it.

At least three big guys, VTVcab, FPT Telecom and VTC, have begun providing OTT TV service.

VTVcab was the pioneer in this field when it launched VTV Plus, the OTT TV service, in January 2013. This is the product of the cooperation between VTVcab and Medianet Corporation.

On the OTT technology platform, VTV Plus allows to recognize the devices TV watchers use to choose appropriate signals and resolution, thus helping audience watch TV with the highest quality, no matter where they move to.

Pham Anh Chien, President of Medianet, said that VTV Plus’ coverage can reach all the screens run on iOS, Android and Windows Phone, all the screens of phones, tablets, personal computers, laptops or smart TVs.

Users just need to download VTV Plus app and connect with Internet to turn all the screens into TV sets. All the TV television channels provided on VTVcab system are available on VTV Plus.

FPT Telecom has officially provided FPT Play on Google’s and Apple’s app stores since early October 2013. A report showed that FPT Play has been downloaded by 100,000 users who have installed it on smart devices.

FPT Play is providing 85 TV channels, including SD and HD signals, while integrating entertainment features (music video clips, TV shows) and the feature of automatically recognizing customers’ type of connection, so as to provide suitable quality.

This allows users to watch TV content with stable quality on different types of connections including 3G or wifi. It also can automatically inform about the new programs or contents to users.

Vu Anh Tu, Technology Director of FPT Telecom, said the outstanding features of FPT Play lie in stable and high quality transmission and interesting content.

Tu has revealed that FPT Telecom is going to launch the new versions of FPT Play in the time to come, which allows strengthening the connection capability between two products. This would help users have better interaction with TVs.

VTC has been considering providing services on OTT platform for over one year. It is under the technical trial run.

Televisions provide services not to… make money

VTV Plus began providing services on January 1, 2013, and began collecting fees on July 1, 2013. To date, it has attracted more than 2.5 million user accounts.

However, Chien from Medianet admitted that the number of viewers paying fees remains very modest, even though VTV Plus offers a flexible payment method, under which users can pay monthly subscription fee, weekly or daily subscription fee, or pay fee for the contents they watch.

“The growth rate of the number of subscribers has been very satisfactory, but most of them just want to use services free of charge,” Chien said.

At present, VTV Plus is still in its early development stage when its top priority task is to obtain as many subscribers as possible.

Chien noted that OTT TV is a kind of service with great potentials, while OTT TV service providers hope they can charge users for original content or interaction TV services.

Tu from FPT Telecom also said FPT Play is still free to all users.

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