Vietnam in Talks to Ban OTT Messaging Apps

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has outlined plans to regulate use of OTT messaging services in the country.

State media confirmed that a ban could be on the way, citing the harm done to mobile operators by the free messaging services, according to Reuters“We will lose 40-50 per cent of our revenue if all of our 40m customers use Viber instead of traditional call and text,” a representative of Viettel Telecom, one of Vietnam’s largest network operators, told state TV.

Apps including KakaoTalk and Line have proved particularly successful in their native Asian territories. Many operators around the world are now working on more value-add services to replace revenue lost to OTT providers.

Some are worried that this is simply a move to censor Vietnams inhabitants by the Communist regime. Encrypted OTT provider Viber was banned by the Saudi Arabian government in June.