Big network operators prove to be more “indocile”

VietNamNet Bridge – As predicted, after Beeline, a small network operator, launched the “billionaire service package”--a new war in the mobile call charges has been kicked off. While Beeline has been told to stop the super-cheap package, big guys have jumped on the bandwagon.

The state management agency has the right to “blow its whistle” asking network operators to stop the activities that it believes the signs of unhealthy competition. However, in some cases, its actions have no effect, if the network operators are the “big cheeses”.

Meanwhile, small mobile network operators had to stop their sale promotion campaigns immediately after they were instructed to do that.

“Small telecom companies prove to be more obedient to the instructions of the Ministry of Information and Communication than the big ones,” an official of the ministry commented on Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam.

The words of the official partially can show the current situation of the telecom market.

Three months ago, Beeline launched the “billionaire service package”, offering low charges in an effort to attract more users. Under the sale promotion campaign, when people bought a simcard priced at 20,000 dong, they would have 20,000 dong in their main account. Besides, Beeline would give 270,000 dong more to the users’ account every day. As such, people need to pay 20,000 dong and they would have one billion dong in account for use for 10 years. However, the 1 billion dong could be used only to make inner-network calls.

However, the super-cheap package has no more been available on the market, after the Ministry of Information and Communication instructed Beeline to stop providing the package. The ministry said that it can see the signs of dumping the mobile call charges which will influence the market’s operation.

Meanwhile, right after Beeline’s program stopped, some big guys on the telecom market have also launched attractive service packages with very low charges. As predicted by experts, the telecom market is now witnessing a new mobile call charges competition when the big guys jump on the bandwagon.

Viettel, the mobile network with the highest number of subscribers, has launched Tomato Green package, offering the super-cheap charge of 50 dong per call-minute. Tomato Green is being applied to new pre-paid subscribers and the subscribers who are using Tomato, Sumosim packages activated since June 1, 2011. Tomato Green has been applied since November and will last on January 30, 2012.

With Tomato Green, clients can make 150 free messages and enjoy the low charge of 50 dong per minute for the inner-network calls from 10 pm to 12 pm and 500 dong per minute for the calls from 0 am to 5 pm every day.

However, Viettel’s Tomato Green proves to make nothing if MobiFone’s Alo 24/7 program applied from November 29 to December 10, 2011. The noteworthy thing is that the mobile network does not run noisy ad campaigns on mass media, does not introduce the new package on its official website. It only quietly sends information to mobile subscribers.

With Alo24/7, MobiFone’s subscribers, when registering the package, can enjoy free 80 inner-network minute calls, i.e the charges of 7500 dong for 130 minute calls, 10,000 dong for 180 minutes, 15,000 dong for 300 minutes within the day. As such, users just have to pay 50-60 dong per minute.

A manager of a telcom has raised a question that if the above said service packages could be considered as dumping on the market and should the packages be stopped, like the Beeline’s package.

Big network operators are the ones who hold big market shares with the numbers of subscribers reaching tens of millions for each. Therefore, once they apply big sale promotion campaigns, they would destroy the market structure, and the impacts of their promotion campaigns would be even more serious than the ones of small network operators.

Source: TBKTVN