Vietnam Multimedia Corporation (VTC) is scheduled to offer the country’s first broadcasting television service on mobiles beginning December in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City before going nationwide by 2008. The corporation plans to run the service on a trial basis in November, to test technical systems and content via eight television broadcasting channels and four radio channels to provide both foreign and domestic content. The four radio channels will include two from Voice of Vietnam (VoV) and two others by VTC offering mostly music. The service will also include video on demand on a pay-per-view basis.
The company started commercialising the PayTV service after a year-long pilot network using digital video broadcasting- handheld (DVB-H) technology, the first service provider to do so in the Asia Pacific region and the second in the world after Italy. Le Doan Quan, director of VTC Mobile Television company, said the company is rushing for final preparations for the test and has finished writing its marketing plan. He said the company would sell a PayTV service through pre-paid cards for various kinds of service packages including the whole package and pay-per-view from January 1, 2007.
The plan was announced a month after the corporation signed a technical support agreement with Nokia to ensure the service was received by Nokia’s Nseries DVB-H-enabled multimedia devices, including Nokia N92, at the highest end. Other mobile handsets on the market are unable to receive the service, as they have not yet integrated the technology. “We also have talks with all handheld producers, like Motorola, Samsung and Ericsson to integrate DVB-H in their products and expect in the next two years, terminal integrated technology will be popular to Vietnam’s market with reasonable price,” said Quan.
Vietnam has over 12 million mobile subscribers and 42.6 per cent of 3,000 surveyed people use content services for mobile. Nguyen Tuyet Hac, an official from the country’s largest value-added service provider, VASC, said the services will focus on online music, games, online television and video clip download. The company predicted that there will be 20 million people accessing the service by 2009, with an expected 53 service providers.
(Source: VIR via VietNamNet Bridge)
