Customers at a VNPT office in Hanoi (Source: baodautu.vn)The Ministry of Information and Communications reported that telecommunicationsservice revenue increased only about 0.3 percent last year compared to the sameperiod of 2019.
In which, Viettel hit a total revenue of more than 263 trillion VND (11.4 billionUSD), a year-on-year increase of 4.1 percent, profit before tax reached morethan 42 trillion VND.
VNPT recorded a total revenue of more than 162.7 trillion VND, fulfilling 95 percentof its plan, profit was 7.1 trillion VND.
Meanwhile, MobiFone revenue is estimated at nearly 30.5 trillion VND.
Last year continued to witness the decline of voice and SMS in the structure oftelecommunications revenue.
According to the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority, Ministry of Informationand Communications, mobile service revenue is still mainly based on traditionaltypes of services, especially voice and SMS, which account for more than 54 percent.Meanwhile, these services are saturated.
Vietnam's traditional telecommunication service revenue reduction trend is evenfaster than the world.
This is the result of a series of factors such as saturated mobile subscribers,continuously decreasing rates to compete among carriers, the popularity ofcalling and texting services on OTT.
Notably, the telecom market has seen a drop in data prices since 2018, causingdata traffic to double or triple, but data revenue of carriers has onlyincreased from 10-20 percent.
This trend has forced operators such as Viettel and MobiFone to shift toprovide digital infrastructure and services such as digital services, fiberoptic infrastructure, digital payment, and cloud services in recent years.
VNPT has deployed a wide range of products for government customers and stateagencies such as the national public service portal and solutions, products foreducation, healthcare, smart cities, and smart travel.
Do Minh Phuong, deputy general director of Viettel Group, explained that thegroup still reached the target and slight growth last year was due to itsstable operation of the foreign telecommunications markets and the favourableexchange rate.
Traditional services decreased by 7-10 percent, especially SMS with a sharpdecline, value-added services were stable and data services increased by about20 percent.
Especially for subscribers, revenue of fixed and mobile broadband had grownstrongly, he said.
Traditional telecommunications services would continue to decline. This was thegeneral trend of the world, said Phuong.
Pham Duc Long, Chairman and General Director of VNPT Group, said that VNPT'sdata revenue increased by 18.9 percent last year.
Its proportion of data revenue in total mobile revenue increased from 28.3 percentin 2019 to 35.2 percent last year. Especially, broadband revenue grew by 5.5 percent,subscribers increased by 39 percent.
Telecom companies have expanded their service portfolio to capitalise on growthopportunities in technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) across sectorssuch as cloud, television (TV) and IoT (Internet of Things) in recent years.
Meanwhile, the rapid spread of smartphones is driving growth in areas such asmobile advertising and new service packages including fixed, mobile and TVservices.
Experts said that telecom companies in Vietnam were having opportunities tostrongly transform their strategy to TMT, especially when universalising 4G and5G mobile network services and smartphones was one of the goals of the NationalDigital Transformation Programme by 2025.
The number of subscribers using data is about 70 million currently and thegrowth rate has been steadily increasing in recent years.
Most recently, the deployment of 5G telecommunications technology is preparingto be commercialised with an investment of up to 2.5 billion USD in the2020-2025 period.
The Ministry of Information and Communications has also promoted the programmeof converting 2G/3G devices to 4G/5G smartphones, and manufacturing cheap 4Gand 5G devices./.
VNA
