The amended Telecommunications Law comprises 10 chapters and 73 articles, and came into effect on July 1, 2024. Chapter 6 of this law regulates the auctioning of telecommunications codes and numbers. Accordingly, telecommunications codes and numbers are listed online on the market for organizations and individuals to choose from through the auction.
In cases where telecommunication codes and numbers listed online on the market expire within the legally prescribed time limit without any organization or individual selecting them for auction, they shall be allocated sequentially and directly to the requesting organization or enterprise.
The Ministry of Information and Communications allocates the winning bids for telecommunications codes and numbers to the successful bidders. Telecommunications service providers are responsible for carrying out the procedures to enable the successful bidders to use the telecommunications services associated with the winning subscriber number.
In the report explaining the feedback on this matter, the Chairman of the Committee on Science , Technology and Environment, Le Quang Huy, stated that there were suggestions that telecommunications service subscriber numbers should also be divided into groups to accurately assess their value, minimize cases of forfeited deposits during auctions, and that the Ministry of Information and Communications should provide detailed regulations. This suggestion requested an explanation of measures to control the forfeiture of deposits for participating in telecommunications number auctions.
Chairman of the Committee on Science, Technology and Environment Le Quang Huy (Photo: Quochoi.vn).
Regarding this matter, the Standing Committee of the National Assembly believes that evaluating and grouping subscriber numbers with special structures based on value is difficult to implement because it depends on many factors such as user perceptions and regions.
According to the National Assembly Standing Committee, determining a starting price for the number of subscribers to be auctioned, choosing an online auction format, and bidding up to the starting price and increments is in line with the provisions of the current Law on Auction of Assets (similar to the pilot implementation of auctioning car license plates).
This will create opportunities for more people to participate, facilitating the accurate determination of the auction value of subscriber numbers according to market mechanisms.
Regarding measures to control the issue of successful bidders failing to purchase assets, the Standing Committee of the National Assembly acknowledged that the failure of successful bidders to pay their deposits is a problem occurring in current auctions of assets such as land and vehicle license plates.
The Law on Auctioning Assets of 2016 stipulates that the winning bidder is responsible for paying the full purchase price of the auctioned asset as agreed in the auction sale contract. Failure to pay the deposit constitutes a breach of the auction sale contract and is governed by civil law.
In addition, the draft Telecommunications Law (amended) also stipulates a suitable starting price for participation in auctions to reduce barriers and create conditions for all organizations and individuals who wish to participate in the auction. However, this regulation also leads to certain risks, such as the abandonment of deposit money.
Clause 10 of Article 50 of the draft Law assigns the Government the responsibility to provide detailed regulations on the auction of the right to use telecommunications number resources and Vietnamese national domain names ".vn", ensuring compliance with the law on asset auctions.
In addition, the Standing Committee of the National Assembly requested the Government to study and incorporate the opinions of the agency in charge of reviewing the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Auctioning Assets to add provisions on penalties for violations of obligations in asset auction activities (provisions for penalties in cases where the winning bidder fails to purchase the asset).
"With this solution, the deposit amount may be low to attract more participants in the auction, but the large penalty for breach of obligation will help prevent abnormally high bids followed by forfeiture of the deposit, thus disrupting the market," according to the National Assembly Standing Committee.
Based on this analysis, the Standing Committee of the National Assembly proposes retaining the provision on auctioning telecommunications number resources as in the draft Law .
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