Telecom market continues to be hot

The telecom service market continues to heat up with 18.5 million new mobile phone subscribers in May alone, an increase of 21.9 percent in comparison with the same period of 2009. Meanwhile, mobile service providers have launched many new services in order to attract more subscribers.

Service providers welcome the World Cup

In mid-May 2010, Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT) signed a contract for exclusive rights to broadcast the 2010 World Cup football matches on mobile devices. Under the contract, 64 of the matches will be televised live with Mobile TV service provided by MobiFone and VinaPhone, allowing users to watch the games with mobile TV service if they have not time to see the matches on TV.

From June 10, 2010, Vinaphone began providing service packages to view the World Cup live through Live TV World Cup 2010 for subscribers who use Mobile TV service. With just 30,000 dong per registration, clients can watch all the football matches of the World Cup live.

To register, subscribers send a text message WC2010_TV to 888 or they can register on the website http://tv.vinaphone.com.vn. Besides, VinaPhone has also established a website at http://tv.vinaphone.com.vn which aims to provide hot news about the World Cup, comments about football matches and video on demand.

According to Pham Ngoc Tu, a senior executive of VinaPhone, to improve service quality, especially for 3G subscribers, the provider will offer some 60 added value services on mobile phone from now to the end of 2010. “Added value services now account for 10 percent of the total revenue of VinaPhone and the figure is expected to increase to 20 percent in the near future,” Tu explained.

S-Fone has the advantage in providing added value services, especially applications based on Brew technology. The company has introduced 18 more applications, mostly games. All 18 games can be downloaded for 9990 dong with no time limits.

In June, S-Fone announced expansion of coverage of 3G-EVDO service to 37 cities and provinces nationwide, including Long Xuyen, Ba Ria, Long Hai and Vung Tau.

iPhone prices down

Vietnamese service providers have also joined the trend of lowering the price of iPhones that originally began in the US. The US retailer Wal-Mart has lowered the price of iPhone 3GS 16GB from $197 to $100. Meanwhile, Viettel on June 1 reduced the iPhone 3G 8GB and iPhone 3GS 32 GB by one million dong.

Nevertheless, Nguyen Thu Hong, an executive at VinaPhone told Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon that the company is not considering a drop in prices. They have imported 5000 iPhones, which have almost sold out. VinaPhone is considering importing more to sell on the domestic market

To date, Viettel and VinaPhone remain the only official distributors of iPhone on in Vietnam.

Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon

Tags: Vietnam Telecom, Vietnam telecom maket