Small mobile network providers find it hard to raise number of subscribers

About 90 percent of market shares in mobile and telecommunication sectors are now being occupied by three large mobile network providers of MobiFone, VinaPhone and Viettel.
The rest of 10 percent is shared among the small ones. The experts predicted that the situation would continue in 2011.

The small mobile network providers have found it hard to raise the number of subscribers while the large competitors of Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone showed their determination to fulfil the targeted revenue and profit in 2011.

Up to now, the four small mobile network providers of Vietnamobile, S-Fone, EVNTelecom and Beeline haven’t shown any signals of a breakthrough development step.

At present, S-Fone and EVNTelecom haven’t completed building their operation model. The business affair between EVNTelecom and FPT has been still in negotiation process, and it seems that FPT hasn’t been much interested in following this affair.
As for S-Fone, the company expected to officially release information about transforming into a joint venture company and selecting one domestic firm as strategic partner.

Vietnamobile has lately launched some promotion programmes to attract customers. However, the information that Vietnamobile’s subscribers would like to know is when this mobile network provider will launch its 3G network. In the application profile registering for providing 3G services with EVNTelecom in June 2010. However, after EVNTelecom announced to launch its 3G network, Vietnamobile seemed to neglect this plan.

In the latest promotion programme, Beeline offered changing mobile phone numbers for subscribers via sending SMS messages.
Beeline’s representative stated that with its storage of numbers beginning with 0199 and 099, Beeline can satisfy the customers’ demands. However, the subscribers expected more than that information from the joint venture network provider.

While the small mobile network providers showed reluctance in releasing their development strategies in 2011, the large mobile groups confirmed to fulfil the targeted business year plan as well as to expand their market shares within this year.

Le Ngoc Minh, chair of VMS-MobileFone Co announced that MobiFone would seek for additional five million new subscribers in order to reach targeted revenue of 39 trillion dong in 2011.
The group also improve the quality of the post-sale programme so as to keep the current customers.

VinaPhone also planned to attract additional five million subscribers, raising the total amount of subscribers to 40 million. The network provider planned to provide service packages with suitable charges for all groups of customers.

Viettel set up targets to hold 45-48 percent of mobile telecommunication market shares nationwide in 2011.

In related news, the amount of mobile subscribers declined sharply in February. According to statistics shown by general Statistic Office (GSO), there were 172.6 million telephone subscribers nationwide, increasing by 32.5 percent against the same period of 2010, including 16.5 million fixed telephone subscribers and 156.1 million mobile subscribers.

In January, the figures were 174.1 million. Therefore, the number of subscribers in February was 1.5 million lower than that of the previous month.

Noticeably, the amount of mobile subscribers under Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) accounted for 82.9 million units, up 32 percent against the same period last year, of which 11.8 million were fixed telephone subscribers and 77.4 million of mobile ones.

As for subscribers of Internet service, by the end of February, the total amount was estimated at 3.83 million, increasing by 25.2 percent year-on-year, of which VNPT posted figures of 2.75 million, up 26.2 percent.

The statistics showed that the total net revenue in post and telecommunication sector was posted at 18.6 trillion dong, surging by 17.2 percent year-on-year.  - Dautu

Tags: Vietnam Telecom, Vietnam telecom maket