Internet subscribers in Vietnam touches 4.4m mark

Internet subscribers in Vietnam reached 4.4 million, up 26.6 percent year-on-year by July, 2012, but it is unchanged compared with the previous three months.

According to statistic announced by the general Statistic Office (GSO) three months ago, it stood at 4.4 million after reaching 4.2 million subscribers in February and March.

Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC)’s figures also showed a stable internet subscriber number. By June, a number of subscribers reached 4.3 million, 60,000 fewer than that in May and 30,000 fewer than in April, up nearly 10,000 subscribers compared with March.

In this environment of developed digital technology, a stable number of internet subscribers made many people embarrassed, like a 6 million decrease in the volume of internet users in H1/2012.

According to an expert in information and communication, the reason may be 3G services. Most of the people have now moved from using Internet ADSL into using 3G. At the same time, most of statistic offices only counted the number of subscribers on broadband xDSL, not including 3G. There are still some other reasons.

Nguyen Manh Thuan, Vietnam Internet Network Information Centre (VNNIC) representative said that the statistic was based on monthly reports of enterprises. The number of 3-4 million subscribers which has been recently announced only included broadband xDSL subscribers. In addition, there are some other kinds such as, 3G, FTTH, CATV and Leased line, thus it cannot be proper to say that the internet subscribers decreased at this time.

Currently, VNNIC and GSO are cooperating to jointly announce the statistics. Therefore, the figures from GSO may be waiting to be matched with MIC’s ones. In addition, Thuan said that whether the internet subscribers number increase or decrease, it is a normal situation because it is affected by many factors.

According to GSO, mobile phone subscribers number which has just developed in 7 months this year was estimated to reach 6.45 million, up 14.3 percent year-on-year, including 15,200 fixed telephone and 6.43 million mobile phone subscribers. By July, total mobile phone subscribers were about 136.6 million, up 2.1 percent compared with the same period last year with 15.2 million fixed telephone numbers and 121.4 million mobile phones. Total net revenue was about 88.5 billion dong, up 6.8 percent year-on-year.

 

 

Category: Business