Mobile carriers race to launch added value services

Mobile price promotions among telcos will be put to an end soon following a circular by the Ministry of Information and Communications imposing tougher conditions on such promotions, so mobile carriers are turning to added values as their competitive edges.

Under the ministry’s circular, effective from July 1, mobile carriers are banned from offering bonuses worth over 50 percent of mobile card values. Mobile carriers are swift to respond to the rule by not announcing any new price promotions lately, but are launching new added value services.

Tran Minh Huy, director of Viettel Telcom’s HCM City branch, told the Daily yesterday that focusing on new added value services was the right path for 3G mobile operators because added value services play a key role in turnover growth.

“As clients care less about mobile charges and as the regulation on mobile pricing is being tightened, the quality of service and added value services will decide the success of mobile operators,” he said.

According to Huy, each mobile operator has at least 40 added value services and applications like music for fun, music download, wall picture, digital content for entertainment and Internet access at high speed.

To enhance Viettel’s service quality, the mobile carrier launched a new website at http://4share.vn early this month. The website allows mobile users to touch a digital content store for their mobile devices.

Not to be fall behind Viettel, major telco VinaPhone today introduces four added value’ services, namely call management, live information provision by Flash SMS, chat and music download for its mobile users.

VinaPhone said these services targeted both 2G and 3G subscribers. And it hopes to lure more customers who are eager about new technology and new services.

Along with the race, the CDMA mobile network S-Fone said it had launched 18 applications on Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) technology this month. For only 9,990 dong, S- Fone mobile users can use one added value service for an unlimited time.

Meanwhile, Vietnamobile introduces international SMS roaming service which allows Vietnamobile subscribers to send SMS when they are abroad. Customer only have to send an SMS to call centre number 789 before going abroad with a charge of 300 dong per message.

The service allows customers to use roaming in. 30 countries around the world. Vietnamobile said that to improve its quality it would expand its roaming coverage zone.

TBKTSG

Tags: Vietnam Mobile, Vietnam mobile prices, Vietnam Telecom