17-10-2009
HA NOI — Viet Nam’s Military Telecom Corporation (Viettel) and its Laotian partner Lao-Asia Telecom officially launched a mobile phone network, called Unittel, in Laos yesterday.
The network is run by Star Telecom Company, a joint-venture between Lao-Asia Telecom and Viettel, in which the latter holds a 49 per cent stake.
With nearly 900 base transmission stations, the company hopes to attract 1.5 million subscribers or 25 per cent of the market share in Laos by 2010, according to Oulaha Thongvantha, chairman of the executive board of Star Telecom.
Laos currently has a population of roughly 6.2 million and has five mobile phone providers.
Unittel is Viettel’s second mobile phone network abroad; Metfone network launched earlier this year in Cambodia was the first. Metfone ranks second among eight mobile phone networks in Cambodia with roughly 2 million subscribers as rated by Wireless Intelligence, a global database of mobile market information.
At the end of the second quarter of this year, Wireless Intelligence also rated Viettel to be among the world’s 746 leading telecom service providers. Viettel is targeting to be among the world’s top 30 mobile phone networks by 2015.
Viettel is the first Vietnamese telecom company to supply services to other countries. It was established in 2001 and is currently Viet Nam’s largest mobile phone service provider with about 36 million subscribers to its mobile-phone, fixed-line telephone, wireless fixed telephone, and internet services. — VNS
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment