VietNamNet Bridge – These days telecom providers seem to care more for mobile Internet users when trying to as they continuously lower their charges.

The total number of 3G subscribers in Vietnam, according to a manager at the Military Telecom Company Viettel, is about over three million, including one million clients of Viettel. This means that one year after  officially introducing3G services, service providers have not seen the high growth rate as previously expected.

In an effort to entice more 3G service clients, especially the users of USB devices, considered as bringing almost instant profit y, the providers have been continuously trying to slash service fees.

VinaPhone has recently taken full advantage of the popularity of Apple’s iPads to launch a new service package, Mobile Broadband specifically designed for iPad users. With the service, clients can enjoy the subscription fee reduction of 30 percent monthly, while the minimum package fee is 35,000 dong a month with the capacity of 1GB.

This is the fifth preferential plan offered by the service provider in 2010 in order to persuade more people to use Mobile Broadband. Prior to that, VinaPhone also had other plan, such as the online sale  for clients who purchased USB for Internet connection, the monthly subscription  and payment for exceeding capacity.

According to VinaPhone, itcarried out thorough surveys on clients’ use of Internet capacity in order to launch suitable service packages to ensure clients’ benefit and encourage them to use the data transmission service on 3G network.

Viettel has also been trying to attract more clients by offering a post-paid package with the monthly subscription fee of 195,000 dong for iPad users with Wi-Fi and 3G support. With the sum of money, clients can use 5GB free of charge and enjoy the low charges for additional use at 60 dong per MB.

Representative of Viettel stated that the pre-paid charges based on the used capacity of Dcom 3G Viettel have decreased by 10 percent in comparison with ADSL Internet connection. He said that the pre-paid charge of Dcom 3G Viettel is 50 dong per MB, while Home N package for non-peak hours is 95 dong per MB.

He stressed that the quality of Dcom 3G Viettel service is higher or equal to the ADSL quality and Dcom 3G can even replace ADSL. Especially, he said mobile Internet should be seen as an effective tool to fulfill the target of providing broadband services to 95 percent of families by 2020. This is part of the project to turn Vietnam into an IT power, as approved by the Prime Minister.

According to Viettel’s analysis, wireless broadband Internet is in no way inferior to ADSL in terms of quality and prices, and even has more advantages. Providing ADSL services requires heavy investments and pulling optical cables to households. This is especially difficult in remote and mountainous areas.

S-Fone, known as the latecomer on the telecom market, has also slashed the network joining fee by 70 percent and reduced the charges on excessive used capacity for S-Connect service by 40 percent.

Under the new programme, the network admission fee of post-paid S-Connect service has dropped from 50,000 dong to 15,000 dong, while the charge on excessive used capacity has dropped from 80 dong per MB to 50 dong. The subscription fees of Data Home, Data Office, Data VIP packages have been lowered from 145,000 dong, 250,000 dong and 400,000 dong to 120,000, 200,000 and 300,000 dong, respectively.

C. V