Around one million TV viewers in Ho Chi Minh City and several southern provinces will be denied access to HTV7 and HTV9, two of the country’s most established and watched channels if HCM Television stops its broadcasts on the analog infrastructure altogether by December 2015.

Some 100,000 households in HCMC, or 5% of the city’s population, who have yet to subscribe to digital TV, won’t be able to watch the two channels by December 2015.

Several hundreds of thousands of households in such provinces as Dong Nai, Binh Duong and Ba Ria-Vung Tau will also suffer.

According to a state project from now to 2020, by 2015, 80% of households with TV nationwide will gain access to digital TV, among which digital terrestrial TV is expected to account for roughly 55%.

By the end of 2015, central and local television stations are expected to switch totally from analog TV to digital terrestrial television in major cities. Five major cities, namely Hanoi, HCMC, Da Nang, Hai Phong and Da Nang will go fully digital by June 2014.

HCMC People’s Committee recently urged that HCM Television (HTV) be allowed to provide both terrestrial analog and digital TV services in a certain period after the May 31, 2015 deadline.

The committee also urged that reception devices which are imported and consumed in HCMC be not required to have the digital signal reception feature.

According to experts, though digitalizing television is a governmental policy designed to enhance television quality and save the country’s digital resources, it is in fact a costly, long-term process if television services are to go fully digital.

It’s estimated that local television viewers would have to pay a total of VND9,100 billion (US$433.6 mil) to buy new receiving devices, while television stations would also spend several trillion dongs on new transmitters.

There are roughly 18.2 million households with television sets in Vietnam. Among them, nearly 12.6 million are currently using antennas.

While television service providers are quite enthusiastic about the project, most locals remain indifferent, as the addition of new programs doesn’t quite make up for the extra expenses.