VietNamNet Bridge – Huawei and ZTE have been well known as the
big telecom device providers in Vietnam, whose presence in the market has
helped make the hi-tech devices cheaper. However, questions have been raised
about the security of the products of the two suppliers.
European and US manufacturers and
suppliers such as Ericsson, Alcatel, Nokia and Siemens had dominated the Vietnamese
telecom device market until the presence of the two Chinese suppliers Huawei
and ZTE.
At that time Ericsson was the
biggest equipment supplier and the biggest partner of Vietnamese mobile network
operators. However, things have changed quite a lot since the two Chinese
manufacturers penetrated the market.
In the competition between Huawei
and the European supplier, the BTS (base trans-receiver station) price then
dropped by 50 percent in comparison with the lowest price level on the market
and by 100 percent in comparison with the highest price level. Experts
commented that Huawei then created a record deepest low in the prices of
telecom equipments.
Since then, Ericsson has lost a
big part of the market share into the hands of the Chinese rivals. Following
Huawei, ZTE has also been providing equipments at very low prices.
More Vietnamese mobile network
operators then began paying attention to the two Chinese suppliers.
Vietnamobile, for example, reportedly signed with Huawei a special contract on
equipment providing worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even big mobile network operators
namely VinaPhone and MobiFone also began reducing the equipment purchase from
Ericsson, because they were attracted with the low prices offered by the
Chinese suppliers.
Especially, the products of the
manufacturers have been flooding the market recently, together with the
movement of using low cost phone sets and USBs
However, observers have noted
that they can see some changes with the movement of using Chinese equipments
recently, since the day the US, Canada, Australia and India expressed their
doubts about the security threat when using Huawei’s or ZTE’s products.
Manager of a big mobile network
in Vietnam, said that though evidences have not been shown, it’s still
necessary to take cautious steps to prevent bad things.
Manager of a telco, when asked if
the security threat exists in reality, said that Chinese consumer goods have
been found as containing toxic chemicals and have been boycotted not only in
Vietnam, but all over the world. Therefore, experts have every reason to doubt
that spy software exist in the telecom equipments provided by China.
He thinks that Vietnamese telecom
groups may reconsider their plan to buy Chinese equipments, simply because the
services to be provided with Chinese equipments would not please customers,
which would put them at a disadvantage in the competition with the rivals.
The military telco Viettel has
pioneered in the movement of using domestically made products instead of
low-cost Chinese products. The telecom service provider has also been taking
care for every phase of the service providing process to ensure the safety of
the system.
An executive of Viettel said the
company tries to work with a lot of different equipment suppliers so as to ease
the reliance on them. This explains why the suppliers still cannot sell
products in big quantities to Viettel.
“We are striving for a
self-sufficient policy, i.e we plan to make products ourselves, not only
simple, but complicated products as well,” he said.
Meanwhile, the representative of
another mobile network said he thinks the Chinese suppliers would find it
difficult to offer to sell their products in Vietnam.
Infonet
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