Through the Law on Telecommunications (amended), there are provisions on digital auctions.

The Law on Telecommunications (amended) consists of 10 Chapters and 73 Articles, effective from July 1, 2024. Chapter 6 of this law regulates the auction of the right to use telecommunication codes and numbers. Accordingly, telecommunication codes and numbers are listed online on the market for organizations and individuals to choose auction codes and numbers.

In case the telecommunication codes and numbers listed online on the market expire according to the provisions of law and no organization or individual selects the codes and numbers for auction, they will be allocated sequentially and directly to the requesting organizations and enterprises.

The Ministry of Information and Communications allocates the auction winning telecommunication codes and numbers to the auction winners. Telecommunications service providers are responsible for carrying out procedures for auction winners to use telecommunication services associated with the auction winning subscriber numbers.

In the report explaining the acceptance of this content, Chairman of the Committee for Science, Technology and Environment Le Quang Huy said that there was an opinion suggesting that telecommunication service subscriber numbers should also be divided into groups to properly assess their value, minimizing the cases of deposit abandonment during auctions and assigning the Ministry of Information and Communications to provide detailed regulations. This opinion proposed to explain measures to control the deposit abandonment to participate in auctions of telecommunication numbers.

Dialogue - Passing the Law on Telecommunications (amended), with provisions on auctioning telecommunication numbers — Chairman of the Committee for Science, Technology and Environment Le Quang Huy (Photo: Quochoi.vn).

Regarding this, the Standing Committee of the National Assembly believes that the assessment to classify subscriber numbers with special structures by value is difficult to implement because it depends on many factors such as the user's perception, region, and area.

Determining a starting price for the number of subscribers conducting the auction, choosing the form of online auction, bidding up according to the starting price and step price, according to the National Assembly Standing Committee, is in accordance with the provisions of the current Law on Property Auction (similar to the pilot implementation of car license plate auction).

This will create opportunities for many people to participate, creating conditions to accurately determine the value of the auctioned subscription according to the market mechanism.

Regarding measures to control the situation where auction winners do not buy the property, the National Assembly Standing Committee acknowledged that the problem of auction winners leaving deposits is an ongoing issue in the current auction of auctioned assets such as land, car license plates, etc.

The Law on Property Auction 2016 stipulates that the auction winner is responsible for paying the full amount of the auctioned property as agreed in the auctioned property sale contract. In case of forfeiting the deposit, it is a violation of the agreement in the auctioned property sale contract and is subject to civil law.

In addition, the draft Law on Telecommunications (amended) also stipulates an appropriate starting price when participating in the auction to limit barriers and create conditions for all organizations and individuals who want to participate in the auction. However, this provision also leads to certain risks such as the situation of losing the deposit.

Clause 10, Article 50 of the draft Law assigns the Government to specify in detail the auction of the right to use the telecommunications number warehouse and the Vietnamese national domain name ".vn" to ensure compliance with the law on asset auctions.

In addition, the National Assembly Standing Committee requested the Government to study and accept the opinions of the agency in charge of reviewing the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Property Auction to supplement regulations on penalties for violations of obligations in property auction activities (prescribing penalties in cases where the auction is won but the property is not purchased).

"With this solution, the deposit amount may be low to attract many people to participate in the auction, but the large fine for violating obligations will help prevent the situation of paying unusually high prices and then losing the deposit, causing market manipulation," according to the National Assembly Standing Committee.

With this analysis, the National Assembly Standing Committee proposed to keep the regulations on telecommunications number auction as in the draft Law .

Source