Big network operators prove to be more “indocile” | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update

Big network operators prove to be more “indocile”

December 13, 2011 about Uncategorized

LookAtVietnam - As predicted, after Beeline, a small network operator,
launched the “billionaire service package”–a new war in the mobile call charges
has been kicked off. While Beeline has been told to stop the super-cheap
package, big guys have jumped on the bandwagon.

The state management agency has the right to “blow its whistle” asking network
operators to stop the activities that it believes the signs of unhealthy
competition. However, in some cases, its actions have no effect, if the network
operators are the “big cheeses”.
Meanwhile, small mobile network operators had to stop their sale promotion
campaigns immediately after they were instructed to do that.
“Small telecom companies prove to be more obedient to the instructions of the
Ministry of Information and Communication than the big ones,” an official of the
ministry commented on Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam.
The words of the official partially can show the current situation of the
telecom market.
Three months ago, Beeline launched the “billionaire service package”, offering
low charges in an effort to attract more users. Under the sale promotion
campaign, when people bought a simcard priced at 20,000 dong, they would have
20,000 dong in their main account. Besides, Beeline would give 270,000 dong more
to the users’ account every day. As such, people need to pay 20,000 dong and
they would have one billion dong in account for use for 10 years. However, the 1
billion dong could be used only to make inner-network calls.
However, the super-cheap package has no more been available on the market, after
the Ministry of Information and Communication instructed Beeline to stop
providing the package. The ministry said that it can see the signs of dumping
the mobile call charges which will influence the market’s operation.
Meanwhile, right after Beeline’s program stopped, some big guys on the telecom
market have also launched attractive service packages with very low charges. As
predicted by experts, the telecom market is now witnessing a new mobile call
charges competition when the big guys jump on the bandwagon.
Viettel, the mobile network with the highest number of subscribers, has launched
Tomato Green package, offering the super-cheap charge of 50 dong per
call-minute. Tomato Green is being applied to new pre-paid subscribers and the
subscribers who are using Tomato, Sumosim packages activated since June 1, 2011.
Tomato Green has been applied since November and will last on January 30, 2012.
With Tomato Green, clients can make 150 free messages and enjoy the low charge
of 50 dong per minute for the inner-network calls from 10 pm to 12 pm and 500
dong per minute for the calls from 0 am to 5 pm every day.
However, Viettel’s Tomato Green proves to make nothing if MobiFone’s Alo 24/7
program applied from November 29 to December 10, 2011. The noteworthy thing is
that the mobile network does not run noisy ad campaigns on mass media, does not
introduce the new package on its official website. It only quietly sends
information to mobile subscribers.
With Alo24/7, MobiFone’s subscribers, when registering the package, can enjoy
free 80 inner-network minute calls, i.e the charges of 7500 dong for 130 minute
calls, 10,000 dong for 180 minutes, 15,000 dong for 300 minutes within the day.
As such, users just have to pay 50-60 dong per minute.
A manager of a telcom has raised a question that if the above said service
packages could be considered as dumping on the market and should the packages be
stopped, like the Beeline’s package.
Big network operators are the ones who hold big market shares with the numbers
of subscribers reaching tens of millions for each. Therefore, once they apply
big sale promotion campaigns, they would destroy the market structure, and the
impacts of their promotion campaigns would be even more serious than the ones of
small network operators.
Source: TBKTVN