Reuters reports that the announcement was made by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, and that state media said the government might “ban” all free OTT services because of the harm done to network providers. The report added that the prime minister said the government would “build and promulgate the policies” to manage these apps, but that he did not explain clearly what the government plans to do.

“We will lose 40-50% of our revenue if all of our 40 million customers use Viber instead of traditional call and text,” a representative of Viettel Telecom, one of the country’s biggest phone network providers, told state media, according to Reuters. 

Reuters added that Jong Buhm Park, Chief Executive Officer of NHN Vietnam, the developer of Japan’s Line app, said a ban would not happen. “The government has more options, like cooperation between OTT and network providers,” Park told Reuters.

The prime minister’s statement comes two weeks after the government ordered all foreign websites, including Facebook , to have at least one server hosted in Vietnam, added the report.