The simcard market is scorching hot

In late May, the price of simcards with numbers 0121***7979 suddenly soared by 2-3 times because of news that the subscription numbers beginning with 0121 would be changed to 079. If so, the simcards would be 079***7979, easy to remember.

In Vietnam, mobile phone subscribers want simcards with lucky numbers (6, 8 or 9), or repeated numbers. Some special numbers are also sought.  A fortune teller might say that number ‘3’ is very good and supportive for a businessperson, from a car plate to mobile phone simcard.

Simcard speculators can live well by the job of ‘hunting’ for lucky mobile phone numbers for resale.

Local newspapers days ago reported that the simcard with phone number 0909999999 has been sold to Thai Minh Phuong, a well-known simcard dealer, at the price of $1 million, the figure which shocks everybody.

As the day of converting 11-digit into 10-digit simcards is nearing, simcard dealers have increased their speculation, buying lucky simcards at high prices, and pushing up simcard prices to sky-high levels.

Hung, the owner of a simcard shop on Kim Ma street in Hanoi, said he now sells ‘relatively lucky’ simcards with easy-to-remember numbers, priced at VND7-15 million.

He is not selling ‘extremely lucky’ simcards as it is more difficult to do business now as the market is very competitive. “I have to spend tens of billions of dong to speculate based on the rumour about simcard conversion. This is a kind of ‘all or nothing’ business,” he said.

However, the business, in general, can bring very satisfactory profits. “I once made a fat profit when a simcard I speculated with unexpectedly saw the price increase by 300 times,” he said.

People previously felt unhappy with 11-digit numbers because they were difficult to remember, and called them ‘rubbish’. But now, the ‘rubbish’ is as expensive as gold.

Under the plan, tens of millions of 11-digit subscribers will be switched to a 10-digit format, starting from September 15 and finishing on June 30, 2019.

VinaPhone’s 11-digit mobile phone numbers will be converted to a 10-digit mobile number with the prefix ‘08’, while the 11-digit numbers of MobiFone and Viettel will use the prefix ‘03’and ‘07’, respectively.

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Thanh Lich