SINGAPORE-Vietnam’s government-owned telecommunications monopoly Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT) has asked the country’s government to prevent a rival $230 million CDMA mobile-phone network being built.
VNPT Chairman Do Trung Ta has lobbied the government to suspend a license being given to a South Korean consortium called SLD Telecom and its local partner Saigon Post and Telecommunications Joint Stock (Saigon Postel), according to a report issued by the Ministry of Planning and Investment, which authorizes all investment in Vietnam.
The MPI report said that Ta believed that VNPT could satisfy domestic demand for cellular phone use with its two existing nationwide GSM networks.
“VNPT can satisfy demand for mobile-phone services of customers nationwide. Therefore, the state should not grant licenses to other firms, in order to prevent unnecessary competition and to ensure national security,” Ta was quoted as saying in the MPI report.
MPI granted a provisional license for the CDMA network last December, with the support of the country’s telecommunications regulator Department General of Posts and Telecommunications. Granting that license indicates that both MPI and DGPT are in favor of the project, with its potential for technology transfer and improving cellular phone service in Vietnam.
Construction of the network was to begin in the first half of 2001, after a formal license was granted.
An official newspaper said VNPT had submitted a proposal to DGPT to build a new $90 million mobile-phone network using both GSM and CDMA technology, to go into service in 2005.
VNPT already controls Vietnam’s two nationwide mobile networks, Vinaphone and VMS-Mobifone, which between them have 1 million subscribers. Subscriber numbers grew 79 percent in 2000, causing continual pressure on the networks to meet capacity demand.
Vietnamese government officials have previously said they intend to open the country’s telecommunications and Internet markets to foreign companies, while maintaining control of the basic infrastructure.
