Two major cable TV providers to go public

According to the prime minister’s directive issued in January on the restructuring of companies owned by Vietnam Television (VTV), a part of the state’s stakes in SCTV and VTVcab will be sold.

VTV’s general director Tran Binh Minh said after selling its shares in these companies, VTV will only control the content.

Strategic investors will be chosen according to the following criteria: they need to have experience in pay television services, have sufficient capital/financial background, and have technology and governance capacity to revitalise the firms.

Ta Son Dong, deputy director of VTVcab, said that as many as five foreign investors had already expressed interest in VTVcab’s equitisation.

He also said the company would sell about 15-20 per cent of its stakes first sometime this year, then carry on with the divestment later on. However, the total will not exceed 49 per cent.

Le Dinh Cuong, general secretary of Vietnam Pay Television Association (VNPayTV), said that the equitisation of VTVcab and SCTV is inevitable, as long as the market is to decide what companies do and consumers are to have more choices.

VTVcab was established in September 1995, 100 per cent owned by VTV. It is now providing cable TV services across 60 provinces nation-wide, offering 200 TV channels.

SCTV, jointly owned by VTV and state-run Saigon Tourist Corporation, is the first domestic cable TV operator to get approval for the deployment of its telecommunications network infrastructure.

The Vietnamese pay TV market has seen strong competition in the past two years. According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, as of the end of 2015, there were 31 providers on the market, using four different technologies, namely cable TV (including IPTV), digital terrestrial television, satellite television, and mobile television.

The number of pay TV subscribers is about 9.9 million, of which cable TV subscribers account for 80.8 per cent. The total revenue of pay TV providers in 2015 was VND9.624 trillion ($431.5 million).