Local mobile networks in race to lower call charges
The move is likely the joining of a price race among several major networks this month, after the military-run Viettel announced lower charges on Monday and a Vinaphone source revealed a charge reduction set to take effect this Friday (05 June 2009).
According to the MobiFone announcement, the new call charges per minute are VND1,380 and VND1,580 for prepaid subscribers and VND980 and VND1,080 for those who pay monthly bills after using the services. The lower rates are only applied to inter-network calls.
MobiFone also offers the MobiZone package with charges of VND990 for calls within the network, VND1,490 per minute for calls to numbers in the same zone and VND2,190 for others. Early this week, Viettel announced a reduction of between 10 and 30 percent of call charges which is the biggest drop by the network thus far.
Viettel’s monthly subscription fee was reduced to VND50,000 from VND59,000. It also announced the “student” package which offers low charges to students until they graduate. The package also grants a promotional fee of VND25,000 per month.
S-Fone, who runs on the CDMA channel, said they have no plans to reduce their call charges yet.
However, the network’s managing director, Ho Hong Son, said: “we will take action to ensure the rights of our subscribers to equal or better GSM networks.”
An official of EVN Telecom, a subsidiary of Electricity of Vietnam, told that the company was yet to have a plan reducing its call charges, while the newly-born Vietnamobile said it would surely reduce prices to attract more subscribers. However, Vietnamobile did not reveal specific details of the reduction.
