Two leading mobile phone service providers, MobiFone and Vina-Phone,have decided to hike their fees for 3G packages for mobile internet by25 percent, from 40,000 VND (1.9 USD) to 50,000 VND (2.4 USD) per month,beginning in April.
They cited financial losses to popularsoftware like Viber, WhatsApp, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook Messenger,Skype and iMessage that allow smart phone users to talk and send textfree based on 3G connections (Over The Top – OTT services).
Use ofOTT services comes mostly from foreign providers and is estimated tocause losses of 100 billion VND (5 million USD) each month, around 9 -10percent of total turnover, for local telecommunication companies.
At a recent meeting, vice general director of Viettel, Nguyen Manh Hung,confirmed that OTT services posed a threat to local IT,telecommunications and television companies.
These local companiesearn 80 percent of their turnover from text, talk and television.However, these services are free in OTT services.
Free text andtalk is also calculated to cause losses of 9-10 percent in turnover forglobal mobile service provider, at about 13 billion USD a year.
Figures from MobiFone show that 280,000 calls and 8.7 million textmessages from 3.5 million users are made through Viber. This causeslosses of over 1 trillion VND (50 million USD) per year for localservice providers.
MobiFone and Vinaphone explained that anothermain reason for the fee increase is the huge investment needed forinfrastructure to increase capacity.
The price for 3G services inVietnam is reported to be the lowest in the world, 40 – 90 percentlower than other countries.
Mobile service providers have asked theMinistry of Information and Telecommunications to regulate groundprices of 3G packages for OTT services.
Despite the fee increase, the capacity for the 3G package has increased by 20 percent only, from 500 MB to 600 MB.
Many customers have complained about poor quality of 3G connections in recent months.
Vietnam has around 20 million 3G subscribers, mostly belonging to MobiFone, VinaPhone and Viettel.
With the new fee increases, mobile phone service providers are expectedto take in a total of more than 100 billion VND each month.
Recently, VinaPhone added more than 5,000 base transceiver stations(BTS) and increased its national BTS up to 30,000 and upgraded itsnetwork from 3G to 3.5G.-VNA