23 April, 2015
For your information, on 7 January 2015, the Prime Minister of Vietnam issued Decision 01 amending the “master plan on radio and television transmission and broadcasting through 2020” (the “Master Plan”). Decision 01 officially came into effect as of 15 March 2015.
The biggest change that Decision 01 makes is involvement of enterprises of all economic sectors, arguably including foreign invested enterprises, in the transmission and broadcasting market of Vietnam. Before Decision 01, only State owned enterprises or enterprises where State has majority ownership were given access to such markets.
As a matter of fact, VTV and its affiliates/subsidiaries hold a dominant role in the TV market. The “group” is responsible for both content provision and transmission/broadcasting. When a number of software/telecommunication giants such as (Viettel, the biggest telecomunication or FPT, the largest telecommunications and software companies respectively) start their TV business by taking advantages of their available infrastructure, VTV has sought to isolate them by offering content to its affiliates and subsidiaries first. This results in a modest expansion of newcomers like FPT and Viettel for the last two years.
The cause behind such change is, on one hand, the Government’s plan to separate the pay TV transmission/broadcasting and content provision which fall inside the sphere of the Law on Telecommunications and the Law on Media of Vietnam respectively. On the other hand, the Government wishes to form major transmission/broadcasting companies of large scale which are able to cover services nationwide.
For further information, please contact:
Oliver Massmann, Partner, Duane Morris
omassmann@duanemorris.com
