New GSM Network to Launch in Vietnam

Hutchison Telecom has announced that its Vietnamese operation, Vietnamobile will launch its GSM services tomorrow ( 9th April). Vietnamobile, the partnership between Hutchison Telecom and Hanoi Telecom Joint Stock Company, will launch its service over its GSM network with footprint present at 64 provinces in Vietnam.

Dennis Lui, Chief Executive Officer of Hutchison Telecom said: "The launch of Vietnamobile completes Hutchison Telecom's strategic step of relaunching the operation with GSM technology. This positions the operation to compete more effectively in Vietnam and better tap the potential of one of the highest growth mobile markets in the region."

Hanoi Telecom used to operate a Nortel provided CDMA network, but started a switch-over to an Ericsson based GSM platform last year.

HT Mobile's CDMA network has been equipped with one million subscribers' capacity but the company said last year that due to unfavourable market conditions and industry development, CDMA's customer appeal is tremendously jeopardised leaving HT Mobile's advanced CDMA network under-utilised. During the migration period, customers kept their existing CDMA service but roamed onto the rival CDMA network operated by S-Fone, although they will eventually be required to switch to GSM once the coverage matches that offered by the CDMA network.

According to figures from the Mobile World, HT Mobile launched its services early in 2007, but had only secured around 152,000 customers by the end of 2007, with the base shrinking during the network migration. The country had just over 67 million phone subscribers at the end of 2008, of which 61.3 million are connected to other operator GSM networks, and remainder are on CDMA networks, S-Fone (4.8 million) and EVN Telecom (1.1 million)

Posted to the site on 8th April 2009