Making 3G Work in Vietnam

HANOI, Vietnam, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan re-visited Hanoi with its 2nd Annual Vietnam Telecoms Growth Forum this morning at the Sofitel Hanoi hotel. Endorsed by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) and co-organized by the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy (NIICS), the forum themed 'Maximizing Growth Opportunities in Vietnam' opened its sessions to over 200 delegates mainly from the local telecoms market.

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Addressing the gathering Ms Le Thi Ngoc Mo, Deputy Director General of the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam elaborated in her keynote the policies at present and the priorities that the Vietnam government has lined up for the nation's future growth.

Following Ms Le Thi Ngoc's address, Nitin Bhat, Partner at Frost & Sullivan, presented the International Analyst Perspective titled 'Eye on the Global Return to Growth'. In this presentation he elaborated on the growth opportunities that key markets in this region faced as the recession ends.

The forum advanced with sharings from the CEO of Packet One Networks, Director of Convergys Corporation and the VP of Dialogic along with an interactive C-level dialogue - Accelerating Telecommunication Industry Growth in Vietnam.

In the second-half of the day the forum delivered more local insights and valuable information that will impact the investments and spending plans of local operators and overseas investors. Speaking specifically about broadband growth in Vietnam, Jayesh Easwaramony, Vice-president of the ICT Practice at Frost & Sullivan, commented, "On the broadband front, the Vietnamese market has seen growth of over 60% in the past 4 years. A subscriber base of 2.1 million in 2008 gave the nation a household broadband penetration rate of 11.9%. The subscriber base is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.22% from 2004 to 2014 and is forecasted to reach 4.9 million by the end of 2014. Meanwhile, the household broadband penetration is projected to reach 24.9% by the same period. Consumer broadband revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.11% from 193 million in 2008 to 449 million in 2014.

Adding to this Nitin, who commented, "Prepaid still dominates Vietnam's market with 94.5% mobile connections. High multi-SIM usage and SIM churn has been encouraged by SIM usage bundling with users arbitrating promotional rates and service bundling.  Data revenues do not appear to have gained the traction they have in other markets, possibly due to widespread voice credit bundling. The low penetration rate offer the opportunity for growth in internet access over affordable mobile devices and for wireless as it increasingly becomes the preferred mode of broadband access. Growth in this area would significantly increase data's contribution and importance to market revenues."

Nitin further specified that Vietnamese operators will have to accelerate 3G traffic appropriately and should rely on Wi-Fi where possible to keep network costs under control.

Aside from these analyst insights many industry practitioners shared their views on the increasingly competitive Vietnamese telecommunications market. For more details on this forum or to retrieve presentations from this full-day session email your request to [email protected] or visit http://www.frost-telecomvietnam.com/.

The forum was  co-organized by the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy (NIICS) and endorsed by the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam (MIC).

Clarity and Convergys were the gold sponsors, Dialogic and SAP were the partner sponsors, while WeDO was the exhibitor sponsor for the forum.

The official newspaper partner for the forum was the Wall Street Journal Asia, ZDNet Asia was the official online media partner, Telecom Asia, Wireless Asia and Telecom & IT were the official media partners while PRNewswire was the official newswire. The Telecom Channel was the official TV Partner. Management Systems Asia was the media partner and Developing Telecoms was the supporting media for the forum. Mobile Entertainment Forum was the supporting association for this forum.

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan