In practice, almost all mobile services providers in the world impose international roaming fees on their subscribers. Roaming fees are sometimes very high, which make international commuters pay huge bills when they use their phones in other countries. Therefore, Viettel’s move of denying large earnings from the roaming fees on its subscribers in Indochina has shocked international telecoms companies but delighted Viettel’s clients in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
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| Unitel's staff introducing its service to Lao people |
In fact, ASEAN countries started to seriously discuss an issue at regional conferences on removal of roaming fees a long time ago. In 2013, ministers of information, information technology and communications of ASEAN countries convened a meeting, discussing the issue. The then Indonesian Minister of Information Technology and Communications Tifatul Sembiring expressed his hope that ASEAN citizens would not have to pay for intra-regional roaming fees in the near future. He believed that the policy would benefit the ASEAN economy as all ASEAN-based businesses would reduce their business costs.
However, a representative of the Singaporean telecom of StarHub objected to the idea, saying that it was too early to talk about the feasibility of such a project, as there had been no precedent in the world. Sharing the same view with StarHub, Director of Detecon Asia-Pacific Markus Steingrover said that the idea was too ambitious that the EU, as a comparatively cohesive community with its close connections in terms of socio-politics, economy, history and culture, could not even think about. Meanwhile, Nicole McCormick, an analyst at Ovum said that the idea should be welcomed, but it would take years to realize it. He cited the case of Australia and New Zealand, in which the two countries had been discussing the issue for several years but little progress had been made in the negotiations.
Some advocates for the idea argued that the high fees of mobile services and roaming in Europe are an obstacle to the region’s socio-economic development. They are convinced that with low fees of mobile services and roaming, people would use much more mobile services at home and overseas, positively contributing to socio-economic development.
According to economists, if stopping imposing roaming fees on its subscribers, a mobile services provider would lose 2% of its turnover. This is the main reason why mobile services providers in the world do not want to give up roaming fees.
The above stories show that the proposal to remove roaming fees within Indochina raised by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at a recent meeting with his Cambodian and Lao counterparts was a real revolution in the world’s telecommunications sector. The proposal was also strongly supported by the two leaders of the Cambodian and Lao Governments. Under the agreement of the three Prime Ministers, Viettel (Vietnam), Metfone (its brand name in Cambodia) and Unitel (its brand name in Laos) quickly implemented the project, cancelling their roaming charges on their subscribers from January 1, 2017. Since then, subscribers of the three mobile networks in Indochina do not have to pay any additional fees when they make phone calls or text in other countries.
Regarding this issue, the Director-General of the Viettel group, Major General Nguyen Manh Hung, said that, according to official estimates, the company would lose several hundreds of millions of US dollars, but it was insignificant compared to evident gains for the peoples and business communities of the three countries. More importantly, the removal of roaming fees within Indochina could help strengthen the neighborhood, friendship and unity among the three nations, and promoting socio-economic development in each country, he underscored.
“People often think that telecommunications services are expensive and smart phones are for rich ones. But Viettel has been trying to make telecommunications services cheaper for everyone, including the poor. Likewise, some mobile service providers think that they should invest in urban areas where the demand for telecommunications services is high. But Viettel believes that telecommunications services should be for everyone so it has been trying to bring its telecommunications services to all parts of the country, including remote and mountainous areas and islands, despite difficult terrains,” General Hung noted when discussing Viettel’s philosophy in business.
In Viettel’s leadership’s mindset, “The world is flat”, with no barrier to telecommunications. Pursuing the policy, Viettel restlessly expands and improves its infrastructural networks in Vietnam and in its invested foreign markets while continuously cutting down telecommunications services fees and bringing more high-quality telecommunications services to its clients.
Thanks to Viettel’s policy on providing telecommunications services to all people, many foreign tourists to Vietnam were really astonished when they saw a boy on a buffalo or a farmer using a smart phone connected to Viettel’s 3G network.
In fact, Viettel has made a miraculous development to Vietnam’s telecommunications sector, contributing to national socio-economic development, and hunger elimination and poverty reduction in the countryside.
Viettel has also brought its mindset of “The world is flat” to foreign markets, which are more often poor countries in Africa. In these countries, telecommunications services and mobile phones were so luxurious that poor people could not have access to, in the past.
For example, in Mozambique, before Viettel’s investment in infrastructural telecommunications, networks were concentrated in big cities. There was even no phone in some villages. As a result, villagers had to travel dozens of kilometers to make a phone call to their relatives in cities.
Viettel’s investment in telecommunications networks in remote and needy rural areas has gradually narrowed the physical distance between the rural areas and cities in the country. With their access to telecommunications services, poor people can also acquire more knowledge, science and technology, and their path to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty would therefore be easier.
The way that Viettel is doing business in Indochina and its seven other foreign markets is praiseworthy. In doing so, Viettel places the interests of the community prior to its profit. Its business philosophy helps bridge the gap between the rich nations and the poor ones, and the rich and the disadvantaged, or makes the world flatter.
Translated by Thu Nguyen