Telecoms giants gear up for 4G

Leading telecom service providers Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone are scrambling to put up base transceiver stations and pilot 4G services to be ready to officially offer them this quarter.

 

VinaPhone has been providing 4G services on Phu Quoc island since November after a year of preparation.

 

“VinaPhone will focus on speed and stability of 4G services,” Luong Manh Hoang, deputy general director of VNPT and chairman of VNPT VinaPhone, told Dau Tu (Vietnam Investment Review) newspaper.

VinaPhone has been providing 4G services on Phu Quoc Island since November after a year of preparation. (Photo: doanhnhansaigon.vn)

Next, it plans to offer the services in Hanoi, HCM City and 10 other cities and provinces this quarter.

It will install around 21,000 4G base transceiver stations to provide the services country-wide this year.

 

Unlike Vinaphone, Viettel will provide 4G sim cards to all its customers by March 1 after beginning the task late last year.

 

It had planned to start 4G services in early January, but was delayed by some technical problems. The launch of services is expected no later than the end of March.

 

During the Lunar New Year holidays, it set up 74 base transceiver stations with four times the capacity of normal BTSs and able to support 2G, 3G and 4G services to prevent the usual network logjam.

 

Its deputy general director, Hoang Son, revealed that right after getting the 4G licence, Viettel had begun to invest in infrastructure and equipment.

 

“Providing 4G sim cards is one of our final tasks before providing 4G services.”

 

Major General Nguyen Manh Hung, general director of Viettel, said the 4G launch was meant to boost broadband usage by mobile phone users and raise Vietnam’s profile in the global telecom map.

 

“We hope to make Vietnam among the top 30 nations in the world in terms of 4G services in the next few years.”

 

Like Viettel, MobiFone has already started to issue 4G sim cards to customers, with the number already crossing a million.

 

Besides investing in infrastructure and equipment, service providers are also focusing on digital content for their 4G services.

 

Minister of Information and Telecommunications Truong Minh Tuan recently instructed relevant authorities to prepare for auctioning the 2.6GHz frequency before the third quarter of this year.

 

He also called on all mobile phone service providers to quickly and safely deploy 4G services country-wide.