Burning race to invest in telecom

08:36' 19/06/2007 (GMT+7)

NTT-DoCoMo will participate in big telecom events in Vietnam this year. VietNamNet Bridge – Foreign telecom firms have made some moves in Vietnam: investing in Vietnamese telecom companies by purchasing stocks. However, it is said to be difficult because the supply is limited. In September 2006, in a press conference before the Vietnam Telecom 2006 exhibition in HCM City, the chief representative of France Telecom, frankly stated: “We want to buy stocks of some Vietnamese telecom companies, for example stocks of mobile information companies like MobiFone, VinaPhone…” Ten months have passed and many moves have been made, perhaps including clandestine negotiations among related sites, and the ‘faces of giants’ have gradually appeared. In early May 2007, Norway’s Telenor, the biggest mobile information and television service provider in northern Europe, sponsored the “Mobile Vietnam 2007” event in Hanoi and expressed its plan to invest in Vietnamese mobile information firms. On May 29, in a press conference in HCM City on its social charity programmes in Vietnam, a representative of SK Telecom said that the firm wanted to equitise the CDMA technology-based S-Fone mobile information network, a business cooperation project with Vietnam’s Saigon Telecom JS Company. On June 13, at the press conference to introduce the Vietnam Comm 2007 exhibition in HCM City, Bui Quoc Viet, Director of the Postal Information Centre of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), said: “Many foreign telecom groups have opened representative offices in Vietnam to wait for opportunities to invest in mobile information companies.” According to some sources, American telecom groups want to buy stocks of Vietnam’s mobile information companies through Korean and Taiwanese firms. The race begins Three mobile information firms that are targeted by foreign telecom groups – MobiFone, VinaPhone and Viettel Mobile – will sell stocks in the near future. Bui Quoc Viet, Director of the VNPT’s Postal Information Centre, said that under the current rules, foreign investors couldn’t buy more than 49% of the stocks of Vietnamese mobile information firms. By the end of 2008 or early 2009, foreign investors will be allowed to make joint ventures with Vietnamese partners and after 2010 they can establish wholly foreign-owned firms in the telecom field in Vietnam. In the race to invest in Vietnam’s mobile information companies, France Telecom has the advantage of being an early comer. It is now the second largest mobile information service provider in Europe, with 88 million mobile phone subscribers, 48 million fixed phone subscribers and 11 million Internet subscribers in 220 countries and territories. Its revenue was Eur49 billion in 2005. Another big rival is NTT-DoCoMo from Japan, which has more than 50 million mobile phone subscribers and 135 million Internet subscribers. This group began its world expansion strategy in 2005 through modern value added services for mobile phone subscribers. Norway’s Telenor has opened a representative office in Vietnam but its name is not popular. This group has more than 40 million customers in Asia and in the first quarter of 2007, Telenor boosted its investment in this region with more than $350 million of investment capital, up 40% over the same period of 2006. Other big names that have opened representative offices in Vietnam are VodaPhone of the UK and Lucent of France. The participation of big names in the race to invest in mobile information companies in Vietnam has made the competition fiercer but they still have to wait till Vietnamese companies announce the names of their foreign partners. (Source: Lao dong)