VietNamNet Bridge – Viettel has proposed that the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) increase the charges for foreign calls to Viet Nam from the current rate of 4.1 cents per minute to 6 cents.

If approved, the new pricing policy will bring as much as US$90 million to Viet Nam, according to Viettel's deputy general director Nguyen Manh Hung.

"Foreign callers have to pay from 50 cents to $1 per minute to their native telecom companies (telco) when making international outgoing calls to Viet Nam while foreign telcos pay just 4 cents to Vietnamese telcos," Hung complained.

Before September 2012, Vietnamese telcos collected 2.6 cents per minute from foreign partners, even though the floor price set by the ministry was 4.1 cents.

Most now apply this agreed rate.

A senior telco executive said the average charge being applied around the world is 10-12 cents per minute.

As such, even if Vietnamese service providers double the charges, the price will remain modest in comparison to worldwide rates.

A MIC official admitted that a foreign consultancy firm had previously advised them that charges could be raised to 10-12 cents per minute.

It is estimated that 3 billion minutes worth of international calls are dialled to Viet Nam each year. If the fee was raised to 10 cents per minute, it could bring an additional income of hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

However, the consultancy firm has warned that if the fees are overly high people will instead choose to make their calls using free software like Skype or Viber.

This would be very easy in Viet Nam, where free wi-fi is available almost everywhere.

Viettel and VNPT hold 80 per cent of the telecom market share, while the other 20 per cent belongs to FPT, CMC and Ha Noi Telecom.

Source: VNS