The Vietnamese mobile market has a low Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and is facing strong competition from over-the-top (OTT) services. The Vietnamese mobile market needs a breath of fresh air. The participation of virtual mobile carriers in the market is expected to help diversify services serving digital transformation in the fields of finance, education, health, entertainment and others.

Nguyen Phong Nha, Deputy Director of the Department of Telecommunications (Ministry of Information and Communications), said that MVNO is a new model in Vietnam that can help quickly deploy services, save infrastructure and resources, and bring new value to customers.

Virtual mobile networks do not have to invest in infrastructure, but only buy wholesale traffic from carriers which have infrastructure. Thus, they only focus on designing products suitable for their customers. They can choose a niche market to invest in.

However, virtual mobile networks are very dependent on telecom network operators. Furthermore, this model is new in Vietnam so policies in this field still need to be improved to create a fair and competitive market.

Experts say it is necessary to have policy on the conditions for participating in virtual mobile networks to avoid cases where telecom network operations set barriers to limit virtual networks from participating in the market.

In 2010, the Ministry of Information and Communications licensed a number of virtual mobile networks such as VTC, FPT. According to the license, VTC would provide mobile information services on EVN Telecom's 3G infrastructure and roaming with 2G networks in Vietnam. FPT was licensed for a virtual mobile network, but at that time it did not provide a business plan or work with telecom network operators.

At that time, the Ministry of Information and Communications said that virtual mobile networks do not have their own frequency bands, but must use the infrastructure and frequency bands of other mobile networks. Therefore, the ministry did not control the number of businesses participating in this field. However, some businesses quietly withdrew from the market.

Thai Khang