According to the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), Vietnam by June had 101.7 million phone subcribers or 117.6 subscribers per 100 people, Out of the total, up to 80.6 percent are mobile phone subscribers or nearly 82 million mobile phone subscribers and the remaining nearly 20 percent are subscribers of fixed phones, wireless fixed phones and internal provincial wireless phones.
This has surprised many as a country of nearly 100 million people has never seen this kind of development.
According to MIC's minister Le Doan Hop, Vietnam's telecom market over the last two year has made great strides. Despites crises, inflation, revenue and the market have develop strongly with the active participation of various service providers.
Notably, while in different sectors service providers have raced to boost prices, mobile phone charges have continuously seen a decline.. Lately, all the four service providers including VinaPhone, MobiFone, Viettel and EVN Telecom have simultaneously announced new service charges, which depict a fall by 20 percent on average.
"Vietnam's telecoms charges are now the lowest in the region and in the world. It should be recognised that businesses are striving to bring about values to the society and benefits to consumers," the minister said.
According to industry experts, the telecom market is entering into a saturated phrase when there are two many businesses developing the service at a time. Regarding the mobile phone market alone, six businesses are providing services, including VinaPhone, MobiFone, Viettel, S-Fone, EVN Telecom, Vietnamobile. The seventh mobile phone network, Beeline, is expected to be part of the market in July. Two other businesses, Indochina Telecom and VTC, are preparing to apply for developing the mobile phone services.
Currently, the country has up to seven fixed phone service providers including VNPT, Viettel, EVN Telecom, Saigon Postel, FPT Telecom, VTC and lately CMC Telecom.
It is predicted that telecoms service charges will further reduce in the near future when new mobile phone and fixed phone providers enter the market. More and more new services will be introduced when mobile phone networks simultaneously develop their 3G licenses with total investment of billions of US dollars.
Vietnam now has seven mobile phone providers with nearly 20 prefixes in place. Namely, VinaPhone has prefixes of 091, 0123, 0125 and 0127; MobiFone 090, 0122, 0124 and 0126; Viettel 097, 098, 0168, 0167 and 0169; S-Fone 095; Vietnamobile 092; and EVN Telecom 096.
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