Vietnamobile to focus on young customers

Vietnamobile decided to take a novel approach and target younger subscribers instead of competing with Vietnam’s major network operators in all segments.

Speaking at its recent press conference to launch Vietnamobile’s newest product, the Pizza Sim, which allows customers to mix-and-match call, text, data, and entertainment packages to tailor their individual plan to meet their unique needs, general manager Elizabete Fong explained that young customers are more open to new things, and that Vietnamobile is going to introduce interesting and innovative products that the market is lacking, with the Pizza Sim being only the start.

Though Vietnamobile’s market share is way smaller than that of the three dominant operators, Fong believes that there is still potential for the network in Vietnam.

“We have been in Vietnam for 10 years, during which we have seen the mobile market exploding. However, even when the number of subscribers is 140 per cent of the population, there are still a lot of opportunities,” she said. “Maybe it is easier for the top three. But being No. 4, we are going to be a challenger.”

The operator hopes that the Pizza Sim, with its competitive tariffs on calls, texts, and data, is going to accelerate the growth of the company’s customer base.

Vietnamobile is in the process of expanding its 3G coverage to all 63 cities and provinces of Vietnam from the current 12. “We want to make a good 3G foundation,” she said, “but we are well-positioned to deploy 4G.”

Recently, Vietnamobile announced a change of status from a business cooperation contract to a joint stock company, with Hanoi Telecommunication Joint Stock Company holding a 50 per cent stake, Hutchison Telecommunications (Vietnam) S.À.R.L holding 49 per, and individual investor Trinh Minh Chau, general director of Hanoi Telecommunication Joint Stock Company, holding a 1 per cent stake. According to Fong, changing into a shareholding structure makes the operation more efficient.

Fong added that the operator is continuously lobbying the Vietnamese government to “make competition fairer in the market.”

“At the moment, the dominant players pay us 10 per cent more than we pay them for interconnection (VND550 (2.4 US cent) against VND500 (2.2 US cent) per minute). But we believe that there should be a bigger difference because the dominant players already have major market shares and, most importantly, already amortised most of their investments so their cost may not actually be that high,” she said.

“We heard that maybe the government is looking to reduce interconnection fees. By our international experience, we are trying to supply information to the government and hope that they would heed our suggestions to really improve the competitive environment, particularly for small players like us,” she said.

According to data released by the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications (MIC), in 2015 the number of Vietnamobile’s 2G and 3G subscribers was about 11 million, compared to a total of 120.6 million in Vietnam.

by Hong Anh / vir