>> Booming Vietnam telecom industry expected to cool in 2011
>> Vietnam\'s booming telecom sector earns trillions
>>2010 sees over 38 million new phone users in Vietnam
Vietnam has 170.1 million phone subscribers as of the end of 2010, up 35.4% against from a year earlier, according to the General Statistics Office (GSO).
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| The telecom market will cool down in 2011 as the number of subscribers has been saturated. |
The GSO said the sum included 154 million mobile phone users, the remainder being land-line subscriptions.
For the year, Vietnam saw an additional 44.5 million phone subscribers, an increase of 6.1% from the same period of 2009, including 793,000 land-line subscribers (down 49.1%) and 43.7 million mobile phone subscribers (up 2.4%).
By late December 2010, the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) had a total 88.9 million phone subscribers, up 25.3% compared to a year ago, including 11.7 million land-line subscribers and 77.2 million mobile phone subscribers.
Internet usage continues to rise
In 2010, the number of Internet users in Vietnam grew by 3.77 million, 27.4% higher than the same period of 2009, including 2.61 million users of VNPT. The figure brought the total number of the country’s Internet users to 27.4 million by the end of 2010, up 20.2% against late 2009.
Total revenues of the Vietnamese post and telecom sector were estimated at VND138.8 trillion (USD6.94 billion), up 26.5% against 2009. Of the sum, VNPT made up for VND90 trillion (USD4.5 billion), up 26% for the year.
Recently, Deputy Minister of Information and Telecommunication, Tran Duc Lai, cautioned that the telecom market will cool down in 2011 as the number of subscribers has been saturated. He elaborated that Vietnamese authorities have tightened control over mobile networks via issuing regulations on promotion mobile numbers, prepaid and inactive subscribers.
