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Mobile alliance plans better roaming service
Participating are 200 representatives from 11 major mobile service providers of
10 Asian nations and territories, including Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan,
South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and host Viet Nam.
They aim to improve services as well as make them more convenient and affordable
for customers.
At the meeting, Viet Nam's representative, VinaPhone, a member of the Alliance
since November last year, announced its free operator service for customer
roaming.
Its providers are Japanese NTT Docomo and Taiwan Far EastTone.
The alliance is known as one of the largest mobile alliances in Asia with 280
million mobile subscribers.
Established in 2006, Conexus Mobile Alliance was formed to develop and enhance
international roaming and corporate mobile services for greater convenience and
ease the use for its member customers.
All Conexus member operators can enjoy a SMS roaming one rate of US$0.20 per SMS
when they roam in participating member operators' networks.
Da Nang first VN city to link to world data alliance
The central city of Da Nang City will become the first locality in Viet Nam to
join the Open Data Centre Alliance, an independent consortium of global IT
leaders, from the begining of next year.
The move was announced by municipal Department of Information and Communications
director Pham Kim Son and Intel's Viet Nam representative Pham Do Tuan at a
meeting yesterday.
Under the alliance formed this October, the city and Intel will develop "cloud
computing". This new IT model delivers self-service IT consumption over the
internet and flexible pay-as-you-go pricing.
The development is expected to support business growth and boost effective IT
asset utilisation in the city.
"Intel Viet Nam recommended Da Nang join the alliance because the city has a
clear and comprehensive commitment to IT development," said Tuan.
"The city has topped the nation's information and communications index for the
last two years."
According to Son, Da Nang's IT industry turnover was expected to reach VND1.7
trillion (US$87.18 million) this year. Software exports were valued at $11
million with yearly growth in the sector averaging 25-30 per cent.
Tuan said the city needed to develop open IT standards, which were a global
trend in communications.
He added he expected co-operation between Intel and relevant municipal
authorities would help Da Nang become an IT hotspot for the country's central
and central highlands regions.
Da Nang People's Committee chairman Tran Van Minh asked authorities to focus on
building policies to attract investment to the city's high-tech and IT parks
next year to facilitate the industry's future development.
The new IT alliance is led by 10 global IT leaders including Deutsche Bank,
JPMorgan Chase and Lockheed Martin. Over 70 members from a broad array of
industries are involved, including enterprise IT solutions providers and
telecommunications companies.
Ministry ponders policy on mobile number portability
Mobile phone users will be able to keep their numbers when switching from one
service provider to another, under a policy being drafted by the Ministry of
Information and Communications
Under this mobile number portability (MNP) policy, a mobile service subscriber
would have the option of retaining the same number issued by a previous provider
when changing to a new one.
The MNP policy will be intended to benefit customers and strengthen competition
within the telecommunications sector, according to the ministry, since many
customers have hesitated switching providers because it will require switching
phone numbers.
Pham Hong Hai, a senior ministry official, said the MNP policy was still being
studied and would not be applied soon. However, once MNP were applied, mobile
phone operators would no longer own particular prefixes, and the policy would
therefore reduce the quantity of idle or discarded numbers. Industry statistics
suggest that the number of mobile subscribers in a country with a population of
84 million has topped 130 million, but that many of these were, in fact,
duplicate or discarded numbers.
The country's leading mobile providers, Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone, have
been reluctant to apply the MNP policy. Together, these three State-run
providers hold 90 per cent of market share.
The deputy director of military-owned service provider Viettel, Nguyen Manh
Hung, backed the MNP policy in principle but said the decision needed to be made
at the right time.
Hong Kong was one of the first Asian markets to apply MNP, Hung said, but it
triggered a period of market saturation. Meanwhile, the development of
infrastructure and 3G technology remained in a developmental stage in Viet Nam.
He asked that the MNP be phased-in, applied only to newly issued numbers, rather
than to all outstanding numbers.
HP leads local laptop market
Market researcher Nielsen Viet Nam has released the results of a survey of Viet
Nam's top 10 brand names in the information and technology field.
In terms of laptops and PCs, HP ranked first, followed by Sony and Dell.
With the introduction of the IPad, Apple has become more popular in Viet Nam and
ranked fourth.
In the mobile phone market, Nokia continued to lead the way, despite Viet Nam's
mobile market being flooded by hot new brand names.
According to Nielsen Viet Nam, Nokia phones won the first place because they
were multi-functional and affordable.
Following Nokia was Apple with the appearance of the iPhone 4 that mirrored the
storm it had created in foreign countries. Samsung came third.
MobiFone came out on top as the leading provider of mobile phone and internet
services, followed by Viettel and FPT.
For household goods, Sony was still the brand of choice for Vietnamese
customers.
Although many preferred cheaper products, others still chose famous brand names
such as Panasonic, Samsung, Toshiba and Daewoo.
The survey, conducted by Nielsen and Campaign Asia last month, questioned 1,003
city people aged between 15 and 45.
CT-IN shakes hand with Orange Business
Joint Stock Company for Telecoms and Informatics (CT-IN) under the Viet Nam
Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) and Orange Business Services have just
announced an agreement to supply information technology and telecom
administration services to the local market.
Based on the next generation network technology (NGN), the service will help
local enterprises with branches nation-wide manage information technology
infrastructure as network connections, security, data storage and systems
maintenance.
To Hoai Van, vice chairman of CT-IN, a member of the VNPT, announced that the
two companies had successfully piloted the application of the technology and
that the service might debut in the first quarter next year.
Orange Business Services now has Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networks (IP
VPN) in 57 cities of 27 nations worldwide. It is the first provider of Multi
Protocol Label Switching services in Viet Nam. GeoPost hopes that they will be
able to establish a joint venture with Viet Nam Posts in the near future.
FPT Telecom offers online payment option
FPT Telecom has offered users internet charge payment via Viet Phu company (MobiVi)'s
e-wallet payment system from December 2010 to December 2011.
Customers who choose this form of payment will receive a 5 per cent discount for
the next month and many other promotions.
Cisco TelePresence opens in Viet Nam
Cisco has officially launched its TelePresence Meeting (Cisco TelePresence)
video conferencing package in HCM City and Ha Noi.
The Cisco TelePresence offers connections to 66 countries.
Viet Nam IT forum later this month
The IT 2010 forum focused on Vietnamese IT services will take place in Ha Noi
over December 22-23.
The conference will release the results of IT application in ministries,
provinces, cities and enterprises.
The event will provide a well-rounded overview of Viet Nam's internet,
electronics and hardware industry in 2010.
Source: VNS
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