The Vietnamese government is considering a crackdown on OTT voice and messaging apps due to the threat they pose to the nation's mobile operators.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the government plans to develop policies in managing OTT communications services, Reutersreported, and state media has suggested that the government may ban such services.
Vietnam's major network operators have publicly expressed concern over the threat OTT voice an messaging services pose to their traditional call and text revenues.
But any move to restrict OTT services is likely to raise concerns over state censorship by Vietnam's Communist Party.
The government this month ordered all foreign websites doing business in Vietnam to have at least one server hosted in the nation, in a move criticized as an attempt to improve censorship capabilities.
The erosion of telco revenues due to the proliferation of OTT services, and whether regulators should get involved, is becoming a hot topic internationally.
In China, regulator MIIT elected to step back from the row between mobile operators and OTT provider WeChat, deciding to let the market sort out whether cellcos can charge WeChat for traffic delivered over their networks.
China's three mobile operators have all come up with their own answers to WeChat and other OTT competition. China Unicom teamed up with WeChat owner Tencent for a special WeChat plan, China Telecom has formed a JV with Netease to develop a competing service, and China Mobile is revamping its own OTT service Fetion.
In South Korea meanwhile, regulator KCC has reportedly recently made it legal for mobile operators to charge extra for the use of VoIP applications over their networks.