Vietnam’s telecoms market is at the
crossroads.
The
nation’s telecom market is home to six mobile telecom services companies, all
wholly state-owned except Vietnamobile and S-Fone, a number viewed as too many
compared to market reality.
Deputy
Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang said Vietnam did not
restrict the number of firms joining the telecom market as per its commitments
with the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“Frequency
resources are like land resources. The frequency bands to firms will be divided
if too many players join the market. Besides, state firms are taking the upper
hand in the telecom market whereas the telecom development planning did not
encourage too many state firms to jump into this market,” Thang said.
Thang’s
argument was proven by recent facts when poorly-performed EVNTelecom was
obliged to merge into Viettel from early 2012, S-Fone struggled to find way to
return to its past glory in 2006-2008 and Beeline just said farewell to its
foreign partner Vimpelcom.
Former
chief of the General Department of Post and Telecommunications Mai Liem Truc
assumed Vietnam’s telecom market had exposed shortcomings in some recent years,
hurting firms and consumers if these blemishes were not addressed.
The
biggest roadblock is that major firms in the telecom field are state-owned and
firms from other economic sectors yet to step into this market.
In
Truc’s view, there needed to be state firms in the local telecoms market
parallel to several private equity businesses to create an equal competition.
“State
capital ownership in these state firms may be above 50 per cent only, but not
over 95 per cent as currently. Mergers and acquisitions should be viable
options to pull down telco number and let firms from other economic sectors to
come onto the scene,” Truc said.
Duy Huy
| vir.com.vn
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