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VietNamNet Bridge – Every year, the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group
(VNPT) loses nearly 1 million of fixed line subscribers. However, telecom
experts believe that this is not a big problem, saying that the subscribers have
shifted to use other services such as ADSL or MyTV on the same landlines.
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At the online talk held by VTC on September 25, Phan Hoang Duc, Deputy General Director of VNPT, said that in 2005, VNPT had 20 million fixed line phone subscribers, but now it has some 12 million only.
Mai Liem Truc, former Deputy Minister of Post and Telematics, now Ministry of Information and Communication, said the number of fixed line subscribers has been on the decrease, because Vietnam’s mobile networks have been developing very rapidly and the mobile phone call charges have been decreasing sharply. This has prompted people to use mobile phones instead of fixed line phones.
Moreover, Truc said, the additional value added services on mobile phones and the popularity of smart phones have encouraged people to shift to use mobile phones.
In fact, telecom service providers once put a high hope on the development of wireless fixed telephone subscribers. VNPT and Viettel once made heavy investment on HomePhone and Gphone, but they have admitted that the investments have not brought success. A lot of people registered wireless fixed telephone services, but they have given up using mobile phones.
Truc said that most of the subscribers, who gave up fixed line services, were wireless fixed line subscribers, while the number of wired fixed line subscribers has not decreased significantly.
Truc has pointed out that the key problem behind this is that Vietnamese people remain poor and they believe that one mobile phone would be enough. Meanwhile, in developed countries, every family has both fixed line and mobile phones, because each of the type of phone has its own functions. Foreigners keep different types of telecommunication because the fees for subscribers are not worth considering.
Sharing the same view with Truc, Duc said that the mobile technologies have developed well, which allow to provide different attractive services, while the equipments are small and light, which can satisfy the requirements of users at any times and everywhere.
“It is clear that mobile phones have replaced fixed line phones in some certain fields,” Duc said.
The sharp falls of the number of fixed line subscribers have explained why most of telcos, though having obtained licenses, but have not begun providing fixed line services.
However, both Truc and Duc have affirmed that though the number of fixed line subscribers is decreasing, it is not a serious problem at all, because this should be seen as the transfer from one service to others. Previously, people used facsimile machine to send letters, while they now use emails.
“Fixed lines will still exist, because people will use the fixed lines or shift to use broadband services and others,” Truc said.
When asked about the responsibility of the state management agency on the decline of the fixed line mobile phone subscribers, Truc believes that the state management agency has been doing well in updating technologies and expanding international cooperation. However, he said that the management agency has been slow in making the decisions relating to the frequency and phone subscriber number repository.
He went on to say that if the mobile phone service fees could have been controlled well and telcos could have been successfully prevented from providing services at the fees below the production costs, it would not have been such difficult for telcos to develop fixed line phone subscribers.
Duc from VNPT said that VNPT has provided ADSL or MyTV services on the fixed lines in order to “cultivate more plants on the same land”. In the past, fixed line phones brought 1/3 of the total revenue of VNPT, while the figure has dropped to 16 percent.
Buu Dien
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