Established in 2005, Viettel Dak Nong was initially staffed with just three employees and had one base-transceiver station (BTS). Colonel Tran Van Thuan, Director of Viettel Dak Nong, recalled, “In its early days, the brand of Viettel still sounded foreign to most of the people and officials. What’s more, the shortage of employees and equipment was also a problem to us. Therefore, our investment in the telecommunications infrastructure faced a lot of difficulties, costing a lot time, capital and labor.
However, with the motto of trying our best to serve customers, Viettel quickly strengthened its trademark and gained prestige. Together with boosting the investment in telecommunications in remote and border areas, areas populated by ethnic minorities and places where telecommunications service providers had yet to reach, Viettel Dak Nong has also been taking the lead in providing modern information technology services to different groups of customers.”
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A leader of Viettel Dak Nong presenting scholarships to local disadvantaged students with high academic records |
So far, Viettel Dak Nong has built 865 BTSs, including 268 2G, 304 3G and 293 4G BTSs, expanding the network coverage to 95% of the total area and 98% of residential areas of the province. Viettel optical cable Internet has reached 100% of the communes, ensuring high-speed Internet and new-generation digital television services for locals. Especially, along the borderline of 130km adjacent to Cambodia, there have been 90 villages of seven border communes and four districts and 12 border stations having access to BTS 4G and optical cable network, ensuring the implementation of defense-military and socio-economic tasks.
At present, there are more than 430,000 cellphone subscribers, including 200,000 ones having access to the Internet, 32,000 optical cable service subscribers and more than 25,000 television subscribers, accounting for 60% of the telecommunications market share of Dak Nong province. The services of Viettel are rated as the best in the locality.
Apart from developing its telecommunications network, Viettel Dak Nong has also expanded its telecoms and information technology applications suitable with various different groups of customers; a lot of them are free of charge. The applications include “Bulk SMS” provided free for more than 300 village heads at the cost of VND 1.8 billion each month; Viettel Pay, which is an application of paying electricity, water, telecoms bills and cash transfer; Onme television application; Smas application for the management of student profiles in 360 schools, to name a few. At present, Viettel Dak Nong is working with local authorities to implement the pharmaceutical management system, install security cameras for the provincial People’s Committee and along the streets in Gia Nghia town, National Roads No.28 and No.14, Safeone application for the provincial Firefighting and Rescue Police Office, and more.
With its contribution, Viettel Dak Nong has triggered a competition in the telecommunications and information technology market in the locality, helping bring better services to local people. For years, Viettel Dak Nong has been listed as one of the businesses, which contributes a big proportion to the budget of the province. In the future, the branch will make more efforts to bring its services to all residential areas with 20 households or more and boost the provision of 4G services as well as the preparation for the debut 5G services.
Translated by Huu Duong