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Phone subscriptions up 140% on last January
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VietNamNet Bridge – The number of telephone subscribers nationwide rose by 4.9 million in January, an increase of 145.3 per cent over the same period last year, according to the General Statistics Office.


Mobile subscribers accounted for 4.3 million of the total, a surge of 168.6 per cent over the same period last year.

The January increases brought the total number of fixed-line and mobile subscriptions to 135.3 million, including 115.7 million mobile subcribers, an astonishing total for a nation with a population of just 86 million.

VNPT, the State-owned telecommunications group that operates the nation's number-two and number-three mobile service providers, Mobifone and Vina-phone, has 59.7 million mobile subcribers while the market leader, military-run Viettel, has 45 million.

The strong increase in subcriber numbers in January was fueled by promotion programmes, said Viettel director Hoang Son, who admitted that network operators had dangled rate cuts to attract customers.

Both Viettel and the VNPT were also developing 3G services and had requested the Ministry of Information and Communications add an additional digit to existing numbers with the 09X prefix in order to meet rising demand for new system capacity.

The number of internet subcribers also surged in January by some 49 per cent over the same month a year ago, the GSO reported.

Net profit of the telecommunications sector reached VND9.9 trillion (US$521million) in 2009, a surge of 69.8 per cent over the previous year, according to the GSO, while total earnings reached 143.3 trillion ($7.1 billion), an increase of 61 per cent.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News