Foreign mobile services make mark

Apart from foreign owned Vietnamobile, the domestic telecom market is dominated by Vietnamese network providers.

With Vietnamobile winning the prestigious VICTA 2010 award for "Mobile telecom provider with the best subscriber package," and the ambitious comeback of Beeline, the question has been raised as to what difference foreign network providers will make.

Vietnamobile's aggressive tariff plans and generous promotion offers have come as quite a surprise. Hefty off-net promotions of up to 50 per cent savings on off – net per minute charge and innovative on-net plans offering free talktime everyday with only VND5,000 per day, not to mention entertaining road show events in many rural provinces in the last few months with their nationwide seamless quality coverage.

Vietnamobile continues to invest in in optimising and expanding network coverage to meet customers' communication needs with most recent achievement in extending network coverage to the central region's Hai Van pass tunnel, becoming the fourth operator to outreach to this high traffic.

More than two years into operation, Vietnamobile has demonstrated its commitment to extend its reach to every corner of the country, proof of its commitment to "becoming an important customer-comes-first mobile telecom network in Viet Nam", according to Elizabete Fong, Vietnamobile CEO.

Aggressive

In an interview regarding the application for capital augmentation by foreign network operators, Nguyen Van Tu, deputy director of the Ha Noi Department of Planning and Investment, said: "The Vietnamobile network runs on fast, aggressive investment disbursement, proving that the company is a serious investor in the Vietnamese market."

The seemingly ‘saturated' mobile telecom market has swung back into life with the ambitious comeback of foreign owned Beeline. Although the company aimes at becoming the fourth largest service provider following on from Vinaphone, MobiFone and Viettel, new CEO Michael Sasha Cluzel thinks that it might take some time in the wake of Vietnamobile's significant expansion.

Judging from the US$500 million VinpelCom Group investment in Beeline, the operator looks set to achieve a substantial market share over time.

Vietnamobile, on the other hand, is currently acting fast in order to perfect its network, service and subscriber plan quality to improve competitiveness, successfully testing 3G technology set for launch later this year.

Although experts anticipate potentially tough competition in terms of quality, customer service and tariffs between foreign and domestic operators, healthy competition could have a very positive market effect, offering mobile users increasingly better services and prices. An emerging trend among network providers is to focus on branch-out markets. Vietnamobile, for example, recently introduced a variety of plans including its VND5,000-a-day Maxi Talk package aimed at round-the-clock users, its VND30,000 per month G5 Free Talk Group Plan package aimed at central regions and its Biz 30 package aimed at office workers, among others.

Evidence has shown that when the price race becomes ineffective, network operators will have to resort to smart, innovative and effective tariff plans.

Concentrating on specific user groups will help operators better care for their customers, who in turn will receive higher value-for-money benefits. While Vietnamobile is taking firm steps in realising its ambition of "succeeding in Viet Nam" the mobile telecom community will have to wait and see if Beeline will be capable of breaking into the Vietnamese market with its "market-tempered" team.

Source: VNS