Vietnam Says Half of Official Subscribers May Be Inactive

­Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) has said that around half of the SIM cards recorded as customers by the operators are actually in use.

According to the MoIC, by early October 2009, Vietnam had 113.5 million fixed and mobile subscribers meaning 132.5 phones per 100 residents. Mobile users account for 86.95 percent of the population.

Previous reports had suggested that the country had 111 million mobile phone accounts. By comparison, according to estimates from the Mobile World analysts, the country has 73 million active accounts.

The local Viet Nam Net newspaper reported that these inactive numbers were simcards delivered by mobile operators during their promotion campaigns. People only used these numbers to make calls until the accounts were empty. The country's operators have been engaged in a fierce price war that has often resulted in SIM cards being sold at less than half their face value causing a sharp surge in churn rates.

A shortage of phone numbers recently lead Vietnam to impose a limit on the number of phones that each customer can own. The limit is hardly onerous though, with each person limited to just three SIM cards each.

On the web: Viet Nam Net - Mobile World

Posted to the site on 9th October 2009