Vietnam legal news - Intellasia News Services

The Vietnamese government will allow operators to purchase telecom licences in the country's first telecom law scheduled to be passed by the National Assembly.

The first version of the Telecommunications Law draft covers regulation changes to allow telecom operators to buy or re-sell a telecom licence to other companies. Of which, each licence purchasing case must be approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) to allow market-oriented competition among operators. The buyer must take all rights and duties of the seller. "Current regulations ban telecom licence purchasing, while almost nations in the world allow this to.happen," said a MIC source.

For instance, the Japanese and South Korea governments accept telecom licence purchasing. In Vietnam, a company only has to ask MIC to grant the licence without participating in a contest for licence and pay fee. Meanwhile, in other nations, operators have to enter into a contest, auction or tender for a similar licence.

"The government will also define clear policies on services based on telecom resources such as frequencies and telephone numbers in order to grant licences to operators through a beauty contest, performance bond, auction or tender in order to take full advantage of frequencies limitations," said the official.

The regulation changes stem from Vietnam must having an open telecom market by 2009 as well as apply international practices to granting frequencies, telephone numbers, domain name and internet address licences.

The new law will also adjust the ratio of state ownership stakes in telecom companies. Of which, the state will only hold majority stakes in companies relating to national security and television services. The ratio will be defined periodically.

If approved, these open regulations will allow foreign operators to easily enter the market.

The MIC will submit the draft to the National Assembly by December this year and ask for the name of the law to be changed into Communications Law due to the larger scope it will cover, including media and television along with internet and telecom services.