Vietnam’s mobile operators have prepared good network infrastructure to reduce jamming incidents during peak hours for the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, according to mobile carriers.

Dinh Viet Hung, chief of Mobifone’s Marketing and Telecom Charge Department, said that the company had completed upgrading network infrastructure to avoid congestion caused by overloads during the season.

MobiFone’s call centre capacity has been upgraded to meet the rising demand of mobile phone users during this period. The capacity of SMS and GPRS management systems has also been expanded to meet 300 percent and 400 percent, respectively, of demand during normal hours.

In addition, MobiFone has also organised a team of information technology experts to give support 24 hours a day during Tet.

Hoang Trung Hai, deputy director of VinaPhone, said that VinaPhone had installed 5,000 Basic Transceiver Stations (BTS) using 3G technology as one solution to avoid jamming over the holidays.

VinaPhone has just completed maintenance on its call centre and increased its network capacity to accommodate 50 million users, eventhough it has only 27 million subscribers at the moment. Its SMS system can also transmit 20 to 30 million SMSs per hour.

Like MobiFone and VinaPhone, the country’s military telecom carrier, Viettel, is also fighting network congestion.

Viettel has been upgrading its call centres to meet the demand of more than 10 million extra subscribers, so the total capacity can now meet more than 50 million users.

Viettel also added 2,700 more BTSs, for a total of 23,000 BTSs. It plans to use 27 mobile BTSs in highly populated areas to meet strong demands this holiday.

However, Vietnamese mobile operators also advise that customers should not make calls or send text messages during peak hours to avoid overloading the systems.

Additionally, customers should turn off delivery reports to reduce burdens for call centres./.