Viettel will be allowed provide digital and analog cable TV services nationwide, except in major cities including Hanoi, HCMC, Haiphong, Danang, Can Tho, Khanh Hoa, Lam Dong and Daklak where it is only allowed to provide digital cable TV services, not analog cable TV services, according to the source.

Viettel plans to launch the services in the last quarter of this year. Viettel will focus its cable TV services on rural markets by offering affordable packages, at only some VND30,000-50,000 a month.

Hoang Anh Xuan, general director of Viettel, declined to reveal the service fee but told the Daily earlier that his company would offer service packages targeting poor people. That is what Viettel has done with its mobile phone services up to now.

The license for Viettel came after about one and a half years waiting for the consideration from the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Nguyen Manh Hung, deputy general director of Viettel, who was so impatient with the time-consuming licensing procedure, had during a meeting last year urged the ministry to allow his firm to carry out the business. At the same meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan expressed his support to Viettel’s petition, saying cable TV services should be available for all people instead of residents in urban areas only.

Before being given the license for cable TV services, Viettel had been granted another license to operate as an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services provider.

As such, Viettel is the only firm given permission to provide cable TV services among a slew of telecom enterprises applying for the right. Meanwhile, applications of other entities like AVG, FPT and VNPT now are still being weighed by the information ministry.

The local pay TV market has been developing for over a decade with some 50 services providers nationwide, the information ministry reports. However, only more than four million households out of 20 million in the country are using pay TV services, mainly in urban areas, according to the ministry.