Vietnam Plans Investments to Cut Network Congestion
Vietnam's mobile service market has become hotter and hotter with the presence of six service providers. In order to lure customers, the service providers have been trying to cut telecom fees, and as a result, the quality of services has degraded. They now have to improve the situation by spending money on increasing their capacities.
Le Ngoc Minh, Director of MobiFone, said that MobiFone had decided to spend US$100 million on expanding its network. The money will be used to purchase 2,000 BTS (base stations) and develop six mobile transceiver stations, which can come directly to the places where troubles occur during Tet. It is estimated that the demand for making calls during Tet will increase dramatically, which may cause network congestion.
"The new BTS will be enough to serve 11 million new subscribers. And with the existing 6mil subscribers, there will not be network congestion on Tet," Mr Minh said.
VinaPhone, which accounts for 30% of the telecom market, has decided to spend $100 million on installing 3,000 more BTS, the highest investment level over the last 10 years. Hoang Trung Hai, VinaPhone Director, said that the top priority of the company now was preventing network congestion during Tet, especially on New Year?s Eve, when the number of calls increases dramatically. "With the current investment, we can minimise network congestion," said Mr Hai.
Viettel has also announced it will install 10 new switchboards, raising the number of its switchboards to 20. In addition, the service provider has installed 200 new BTS, raising the total VTS to 3,300, and installed 10 mobile BTS, which can ensure the capacity five fold the current capacity.
An S-Fone representative said that that company was making necessary investment which would take care of troubles during Tet, though it only had two million subscribers. HT Mobile has not made any official announcement, but a source said that its spending on network expansion might reach $50-100 million (the total investment capital for the whole year is $630 million).
Though being the newcomer on the market, HT Mobile has covered all 64 provinces and localities and plans to have 1.5mil subscribers in 2007.
Mobile service providers have decided to make heavy investment in network capacity expansion since they have been facing strong protests from clients. Minister of Posts and Telematics Do Trung Ta said at the year-end summation conference that clients had been complaining strongly about the quality of mobile networks. Telecom service providers have decided to launch promotion programmes two weeks before and after Tet to encourage clients to use fixed lines instead of mobile phones to ease the pressure on mobile networks."
Posted to the site on 12th February 2007