~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

[Year 1997]
[Year 1998]
[Year 1999]
[Year 2000]
[Year 2001]

Vietnam phone firm sees $2.21 bln investment need

HANOI - State-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Corp estimates it will have to spend $2.21 billion over the next five years to enlarge its market share and reduce charges, official media reported on Tuesday. The Vietnam News quoted VNPT director-general Dang Dinh Lam as saying the investment, totaling 31.72 trillion dong, would help VNPT secure 45 to 60 percent of the Internet service market.

It also expected 80 percent of the mobile phone market and 60 percent of the market for domestic and international calls using the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP), Lam said. VNPT, which used to have a monopoly in telecoms, now runs one of three national mobile phone networks and serves about 70 percent of the country's estimated 120,000 Internet subscribers.

Last year, the Military Electronic Telecommunications Co (Vietel) launched a VOIP service to offer low-cost long distance calls in competition with VNPT and plans to seek a licence for an international service using the technology in 2001. The newspaper said Lam expressed confidence that, with the investment, service charges could be cut. Charges for domestic calls were expected to drop to 0.3 cents per minute by 2005 from 0.7 U.S. cents now, he said. The paper said VNPT planned to spend 5.5 trillion dong this year on installing more than 897,000 new phone lines, which were expected to attract 47,065 more Internet subscribers. It put the total number of telephone accounts in Vietnam at 3.3 million, including 730,155 mobile phone users and 60,826 Internet subscribers.

The article also quoted Mai Liem Truc, general director of the General Department of Post and Telecommunications, as saying his department had drafted a new decree covering Internet usage, which would allow cheaper access and make it easier to get licences to offer Internet services. Truc also said more businesses would be allowed to offer VOIP services once a pilot period expired next month.

Reuters - January 23, 2001.