Wireless Federation

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: France Telecom is looking at the Vietnamese mobile market market as a promising one for new products, services and technologies. “Our priority is to become the strategic partner of a [local] telecom operator,” Jacques Fulcrant, Country Manager of Orange France Telecom Vietnam said.
France Telecom intends to buy stake in MobiFone, Vietnam’s leading mobile operator, which will launch public offering this year.
Orange France Telecom said they would apply 3G or third generation technology in Vietnam.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Mobifone, the Vietnamese mobile operator has launched the SMS Locator service for its subscribers. With this service subscribers will just have compose a text and send it to the operator to get notification of the locations of bank, petrol stations, hospitals, café, restaurants around them. This service works as a Hi Tech Compass for the users.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The Vietnamese mobile subscribers are still enjoying lower tariffs as the operators face intense competition among each other, the Ministry of Information and Communications reportedly reveal.
The country is experiencing among world’s lowest tariffs, Minister of Information and Communications Le Doan Hop said.
The Vietnamese mobile market, according to Hop, has seen some big changes in past two years. “Through the economic crisis and, earlier, high inflation, the industry’s revenues have continued to grow and the market has been expanding with the entry of many new players”, he added.
The statistics reveal, the country has added 10.4 million new subscribers in 2009, 30% more than it did in the same period in 2008.
Recently the four mobile operators in the country, Vinaphone, MobiFone, Viettel Telecom and EVN Telecom had reduced tariffs by an average of 20%.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: MobiFone, the Vietnamese mobile operator has introduced the ‘FastMail’ service for GPRS. MobiFone will offer three daily plans for the push e-mail service. The first one, Mail1 plan is priced at VND 500 per day and offers two mail accounts, 20 MB in 5 e-mails per day. The Mail2 plan which costs VND 1,400, includes three mail accounts, 40 MB and up to 15 e-mails per day. The Mail3 plan offers 50 MB of data, up to four mail accounts and unlimited e-mails for VND 2,500 per day.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In order to gain subscribers, Vietnamese mobile operators are slashing prices. Firstly the prices were slashed by Viettel, then MobiFone and the latest in VinaPhone, which has also announced its price reductions. VinaPhone will lower charges for its prepaid VinaCard package by up to 21% making on-net calls VND 1,380 per minute and off-net calls VND 1,580 per minute. The Vina365 package will see a reduction of up to 16%. Postpaid fees are slashed to VND 49,000 per month from VND 55,000 and call charges are dropped by 10%. Additionally, the subscribers will receive a discount for national on-net calls between 11pm and 6am by 50%.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: MobiFone, Vietnamese mobile operator has slashed its fees by up to 30%, following the foot steps of Viettel. Activation fees, monthly fees and call charges for several plans have been slashed. The MobiGold plan activation fee has been dropped by 18%, monthly fee was lowered by 11% to VND 49,000. On-net charges on this plan were dropped by 2 percent and off-net charges by 10 percent to VND 1,080 per minute. The MBusiness Packages experiences drop call charges, on-net and off-net call charges. Prepaid packages have also been discounted. MobiCard plan sees biggest drop, where call charges plunged by 21% to VND 1,380 per minute for on-net calls and to VND 1,580 per minute for off-net calls.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Viettel Telecom has slashed its fees, whilst contenders MobiFone and VinaPhone are also intending to follow the footstep. Viettel has reportedly dropped its mobile phone fees by 10% to 30% from 1 June. The packages like Tomato, Daily, Economy, Parent and Child, and Happy Zone will see call fees slashed by VND 200 to 300 per minute. The fees of student packages and Cairo plan will fall by VND 500 to 600 per minute. The operator would be slashing the monthly fee by 30% to VND 50,000.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: MobiFone, the Vietnamese mobile operator, has launched the Voice SMS service for its subscribers. The service will be available at a price of VND 500/message with free incoming SMS charges.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The Ministry of Information and Communication has given approval to the state owned Vietnam Multimedia Corporation’s, VTC, application to set up a wireless network to offer mobile services. Under the proposals, the newly launched telco will share wireless frequency bands and infrastructure facilities with one of the existing mobile service providers in the country, namely MobiFone, VinaPhone, Viettel, S-Fone, EVN Telecom, Vietnam Mobile and Gtel Mobile.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Vietnamese four operators are competing among themselves to become the country’s first to offer 3G services, following their licensing in early April. Viettel, MobiFone, VinaPhone, and a consortium of EVN Telecom and Hanoi Telecom are struggling to complete the technical capabilities necessary to supply 3G services to millions of Vietnamese mobile phone subscribers.