VietNamNet Bridge  - The green light has turned on for Viettel,a telecom group, to jump into the pay-TV market. From now on, the pay-TV market would be  scorching hot, while the 90 million Vietnamese people would become the subjects for pay-TV service providers to scramble for.

SCTV now holds 40 percent of the pay-TV market, VTV cab 30 percent, HTVC 15 percent, while the remaining 15 percent belong to local cable televisions, which, more or less relate to SCTV and VTV cab which contribute capital or share the infrastructure.

The three brands of the Vietnam Television (VTV), namely VTV cab, SCTV, a joint venture between VTV and Saigontourist, and K+, a joint venture of VTV and the French Canal Plus, now have 3 million subscribers out of the 4.5 million subscribers nationwide.

As such, VTV alone holds 70 percent of the market share. Over the last 3 years, VTV cab and SCTV have many times raised the subscription fees. To date, the service fee has increased by three times from VND44,000 to VND110,000.

The 2012 Competition Report of the Competition Administration Department showed that the pay-TV market turnover reached $2 billion in 2011 and then rose to $2.5 billion in 2012, or VND53 trillion.

The income mostly came from ads, estimated at $850 million in 2011 and over $1 billion in 2012.

The decision to establish the National Assembly’s television channel and the national defense television channel has raised a hope about a competition among the pay-TV service providers, which would benefit consumers.

People have every reason to hope that the competition would help bring better services to them. Viettel, which is considered the “pillar” of the national defense, is a Vietnamese leading telco in Vietnam with a large infrastructure system which others can hardly have. Meanwhile, there exists a close link between television and telecommunication.

Analysts have reminded the similar thing which happened with the telecommunication market. Viettel Telecom once jumped into the telecom market some years ago, putting and end to the monopoly era where the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group dominated the market. With a competitive telecom market, Vietnamese consumers can enjoy the telecom services at low costs.

Therefore, people hope that the same thing would occur when Viettel jumped into the pay-TV market, which is now being dominated by the Vietnam Television VTV.

Viettel has officially kicked off the competition by stating that its service fee would be “more attractive than the rivals,’ explaining that it would make profit on the basis of high number of subscribers instead of high service fee per subscriber.

Following the policy on reaching out rural areas, with which it succeeded in the telecom market, Viettel has announced that it would serve the different groups of clients with different income levels in both big cities and rural areas.

VIettel has built up 7 service packages for three groups of clients, from the urban areas, big cities and the clients who have the demand for high added value services.

In related news, VNPT has got the approval to provide 101 Vietnamese and 31 foreign TV channels. This means that MyTV of VNPT would have 37 more channels instead of the current 95 channels.

NCDT