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Wireless Federation » archive for 'MobiFone'

MobiFone inks expansion contract with Alcatel-Lucent (Vietnam)

  • November 26th, 2008
  • 12:21 pm

MobiFone inks an expansion contract with Alcatel-Lucent worth $48 million. Under the contract Alca-Lu will expand the Vietnamese operator’s network capacity to northern Vietnam. he vendor will provide full turn-key services for the implementation of the upgrade, scheduled for completion by the end of the Q1′09. The services include project management, installation and deployment as well as radio network engineering services.

   

Vietnam to award four 3G licences in Q2′09

  • November 11th, 2008
  • 6:03 am

The Vietnamese government has decided to award country’s four 3G licences by Q2′09. All seven existing 2G cellcos, MobiFone, VinaPhone, Viettel, EVN Telecom, SPT, Hanoi Telecom and GTel, are competing for the four licences.
Each operator until early January 2009 has to complete and return the documents to the Ministry of Information and Communications.

   

Vietnam mobile market shows skyrocketing growth despite economic turmoil (Vietnam)

  • October 7th, 2008
  • 2:34 pm

Within the span of eight months this year Vietnam mobile subcribers reaches the mark of 52.4 million.The mobile penetration rate now stands at around 60 per cent. It is anticipated that the mobile subscribers will grow to 65 million by later this year and mobile penetration will increase to 70 users per 100 people.

Over the last four years cellular market of Vietnam shows fast paced growth, going from four million users by the end of 2004, to 37 million by the end of 2007. Considering its demographic trends it is anticipated that the boom will continue for at least the next five years, and probably longer. “By 2012, we forecast the total 89 million mobile market is achievable in Vietnam. Mobile penetration of about 99 per cent is possible in that timeframe,” said, Roger Barlow, chairman and CEO of RJB Consultants Limited. The factors that leads to growth are:

  • Lower priced handsets and service plans
  • Increased competition among five GSM networks
  • Network expansion into rural areas
  • Convergence between mobile and fixed networks
  • Broadcast capabilities and data usage through 3G deployments

Viettel adds 60,000 new mobile subscribers per day and MobiFone around 40,000 users. Viettel has captured 40% of the market and have become a strong participant

Vietnam lowers mobile phone charges close to cost price (Vietnam)

  • August 12th, 2008
  • 1:59 pm

Vietnam’s big mobile operators MobiFone, VinaPhone, Viettel and S-Phone will be offering promotional sercvice packages. These packages will be avilable from now till end of September’08.

MobiFone named it “Colleague connection” package, in which phone charges are reduced by 30-50% for groups of 5-30 callers. Viettel has VPN package with a charge reduction of 40-50%. VinaPhone and S-Fone also offer packages with charge reductions of 20-40%.

According to the Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang, the mobile charges, which have been falling by  15-20% per year on average, are close to the cost price.

In Vietnam, at present, 60% of the population are phone subscribers, and 90% of those are mobile subscribers. The number of mobile subscribers rises by 15-20 million a year.

   

MobiFone to apply for 3G licence (Vietnam)

  • April 17th, 2008
  • 2:59 pm

VietNamNet Bridge reports that Vietnam Mobile Telecom Services (VMS), a division of incumbent telco Vietnam Post & Telecoms which operates cellco MobiFone, has announced that it will apply for a 3G licence next month. According to VMS General Director Le Ngoc Minh, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) will begin its 3G licensing process in May. ‘We’ve almost fulfilled preparations for financial resources, and an infrastructural platform and management to offer 3G services in the near future,’ said Minh. MobiFone is presently collaborating with France Telecom to showcase the latter’s 3G services at an exhibition at the Phu Tho Stadium in Ho Chi Minh City, as part of the city’s ‘French Week’. France Telecom spokesman Anne Bouverot said, ‘We’re confident that our group has the right experience and expertise to become MobiFone’s strategic partner.’

   

 

MobiFone aiming at 6.5 million new subs in 2008 (Vietnam)

  • January 21st, 2008
  • 5:49 am

Vietnamese Newspaper Nhan Dan reports that cellco MobiFone is aiming to sign up 6.5 million more subscribers in 2008, to take its total to over 15 million. It is expecting to earn total revenues of VND16 trillion (USD1 billion) and turn a profit of VND6.65 trillion. To achieve these goals, the company will continue to expand its coverage area and increase its service quality in all localities and cities throughout the country. In 2008, MobiFone is planning to install 6,000 more base transceiver station (BTS), raising its total to nearly 10,000 by the end of the year.

MobiFone is owned by the state via incumbent telco VNPT’s Vietnam Mobile Telecom Services (VMS) division and was the country’s first GSM operator, launching in 1994. At the end of September 2007 it had an estimated seven million subscribers, giving it a 28% market share and placing it second behind military-owned cellco Viettel.

   

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em (Vietnam)

  • January 10th, 2008
  • 2:27 pm

According to an anonymous source reported in VietNamNet Bridge, CDMA cellco HT Mobile has asked the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) for permission to switch its network from CDMA to GSM-based technology. The source said that officials met last week to consider HT Mobile’s application. Though the cellco, a joint venture between Hong Kong’s Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited (HTIL) and Hanoi Telecom, has not confirmed the report, it is known that in September 2007 it stopped investing in its existing infrastructure.

HT Mobile launched CDMA 850MHz services in January 2007 with the aim of attracting one million subscribers by the year end, but according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database it had only achieved 185,000 by the end of September, in a year in which as many as 14 million new mobile phone subscribers (according to local press estimates) were recorded in the country. Fellow Vietnamese CDMA operator S-Telecom added approximately 750,000 subscribers in the first nine months of 2007, its best period since launching in 2003, but it was the GSM cellcos Viettel, MobiFone and Vinaphone which garnered the vast majority of new users. GSM networks are favoured by Vietnamese mobile users over CDMA, despite the latter being a more recent innovation. One inhibiting factor of CDMA is the smaller range of handsets it offers in comparison with GSM, in a youth-dominated market preoccupied with being able to change phones easily and frequently.

   

Alcatel secures EUR 20 mln contracts from VNPT, MobiFone (Vietnam)

  • October 25th, 2007
  • 12:47 pm

Alcatel-Lucent has signed contracts with Vietnamese communications providers MobiFone and VNPT worth a total of EUR 20 million. Alcatel-Lucent and VNPT also signed a cooperation agreement to establish an IP Excellence Center in Hanoi. MobiFone awarded Alcatel-Lucent a contract to provide GSM base stations to improve the coverage, capacity and bandwidth of the company’s mobile networks in the Northern, Central and Southern regions of Vietnam. Under Alcatel-Lucent will deliver end-to-end GSM/GPRS/EDGE systems, including the Twin TRX, a recent addition to Alcatel-Lucent’s portfolio that doubles base-station capacity. Alcatel-Lucent will provide VNPT with its Optical Multi-Service Node (OMSN) system to interconnect base stations and serve as mobile backhaul system for the mobile network in the Northern region of country. VNPT and Alcatel-Lucent also signed a cooperation agreement to establish an IP Excellence Center in Hanoi which will host the expertise and resources required to support IP transformation and broadband deployment in VNPT networks across Vietnam. The IP Excellence Center will be located in Alcatel Networks Systems Vietnam, the joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent and VNPT.

   

Outside investors see 3G potential (Vietnam)

  • September 23rd, 2007
  • 2:30 pm

At the Vietnam International Communications Conference and Exhibition 2007 being held in Hanoi this week, it has emerged that some big foreign players are interested in investing in the development of 3G networks in Vietnam. Masayuki Hirata, deputy president of Japanese cellco NTT DoCoMo said that Vietnam’s telecoms and information technology sector’s annual growth rate of 30% is a big draw for foreign businesses to enter the market. He was speaking as his company opened an office in Hanoi, its fourth overseas, joining existing facilities in Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore. The office will explore potential business opportunities and raise its profile among government officials and corporate executives in the burgeoning Vietnamese market.

Echoing Hirata’s sentiment was Richard Moat, managing director of France Telecom subsidiary Orange Romania, who said that Vietnam’s telecoms arena has massive potential. An officer of incumbent telco Vietnam Post and Telecomunications (VNPT) said it was planning to upgrade the infrastructure of subsidiary cellcos MobiFone and Vinaphone to 3G, while rivals Viettel, S-Fone and Hanoi Telecom have called on the Ministry of Posts and Telematics (MPT) to license cellcos for UMTS services.

In June 2006 the MPT revealed that it had rejected applications for 3G licences from VNPT and Viettel, saying that it needed more time to finalise the legal framework of the awards. The following month it reiterated that 3G concessions would not be immediately forthcoming because it deemed the matter to be ’sensitive’, given just three or four licences would be issued. It was later confirmed that four concessions are to be awarded, and a beauty contest would be held to determine which of the six likely competitors will get the permissions. A timetable has yet to be set. Despite the foreign interest, demand for third-generation mobile services is not high in Vietnam but both VNPT and Viettel have said they wish to ‘drive technology forward and satisfy all their customers’. Deployment plans will depend on the MPT defining frequencies and licence terms, which is expected once cellcos submit their proposals for 3G rollouts. At time of writing Vinaphone was testing the technology with Finnish vendor Nokia in Danang, while MobiFone has already completed a two-year trial and is in the final stages of submitting a rollout proposal, with HCM City and Hanoi the first places expecting to get the service during 2008. The Radio Frequency Department, an arm of the MPT, has proposed that each of the four 3G licensees be granted 2×15MHz frequency division duplexing slots in the 1920MHz-1980MHz and 2110MHz-2170MHz bands, and a 5MHz time division duplexing slot in the 1900MHz-1920MHz range. The 2010MHz-2025MHz band is to be reserved for further UMTS applications, and the RFD envisages that each network will be granted a minimum 5MHz block.

   
 

 

France Telecom declares interest in Vietnam mobile market (Vietnam)

  • August 16th, 2007
  • 7:54 am

Gallic incumbent France Telecom (FT) is reported to be interested in buying a substantial stake in state-owned Vietnamese cellco MobiFone, according to reports in the local media. MobiFone, one of the two mobile operators owned by government-controlled incumbent telco Vietnam Post and Telecoms (VNPT), has already short-listed six foreign firms as potential advisers to it on a stock market flotation during 2008. Following the flotation, VNPT will hold just a 33% stake in MobiFone, with a further third floated and the remainder sold to a strategic investor. FT CEO Didier Lombard said, ‘We hope to participate with the highest stake possible…Vietnam is a market with potential for growth…we aim to build a lasting relationship with a long-term vision.’ Vietnam’s accession to the WTO in January 2007 brought with it obligations to open the mobile market up to overseas investment, and the Ministry of Post and Telematics envisages that starting from 2008 foreign companies will be allowed to enter joint ventures with domestic partners, and after 2010 wholly-owned foreign ventures will be permitted to set up their own operations. FT is not the only foreign company to have expressed an interest in entering Vietnam’s burgeoning mobile sector; Norway’s Telenor, Japan’s DoCoMo, the UK’s Vodafone and French-US vendor Alcatel-Lucent have all opened representative offices in the country in readiness for the inevitable scramble to buy when the market is liberalised.