High earnings for telecom firms

Hanoi (VNA) - All telecom operators in the country have reported big profits in the first nine months of this year.

Telecom service providers VNPT, Viettel, MobiFone, VTC and VietnamPost have posted high growth rates in revenue, profit and state budget contributions, online newspaper ictnews.vn.in reported.

It quoted Tran Manh Hung, Chairman of the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), as saying at a meeting of the information and communications sector in Hanoithis week that the group’s Jan-Sept profit has met 75 percent of the plan, reaching 3,57 trillion VND (166.6 million USD).

VNPT’s VinaPhone lost two million subscribers over the same period last year as it prevented unregistered SIM cards and pre-activated subscribers, the report said.

Hoang Son, Deputy General Director of the military-run telecom group Viettel, said group’s revenue for September  reached 20.1 trillion VND (893.3 million USD). Viettel  contributed around 2.9 trillion VND to the State Budget in the first nine months of the year, he said.

The number of Viettel’s 3G subscribers upgrading to 4G reached nearly seven million, Son added.

Cao Duy Hai, MobiFone General Director, said the corporation had signed nearly 700,000 new subscribers in September.

Its after tax profit in the third quarter is estimated at 760 billion VND, fulfilling 75.6 percent of the target assigned by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Nguyen Hai Thanh, deputy general director of VietnamPost, said that VietnamPost had earned profits of 168 billion VND in Jan­-Sept, meeting 75 percent of its yearly plan.

Reducing spam

Also at the meeting, VNPT reported that the company blocked 56,000 spam messages in September, or more than 1,800 a day.

It also blocked 713 subscribers last month, at about 25 each day, reported online newspaper baotintuc.vn.

Also in September, Viettel blocked more than 5,000 subscribers, and about five million spam messages.

Meanwhile, MobiFone had blocked 950,000 subscribers this year, as of September 15. The corporation reported that it blocked 47,850 subscribers in the third quarter.

The three largest operators, VinaPhone, Viettel and MobiFone, have all said they have invested significantly in spam filtering systems.

Minister of Information and Communications Trương Minh Tuấn has directed the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority to co-ordinate with related agencies to study feasible economic and technical plans to minimise spam and junk calls.

Viettel, VNPT, MobiFone, Vietnamobile and Gtel had signed a commitment to block spam on May 11 last year. The agreement took effect on July 1 this year.-VNA