Vietnam Formally Grants GSM License to HT Telecom

Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications has formally granted a GSM operating license to HT Telecom - even though the operator has started a long planned migration of its subscriber base to a GSM network it is already constructing. HT Mobile was established in 2003 as a CDMA2000 joint venture between Hutchison Telecom and Hanoi Telecom.

The government had agreed to allow the migration between technologies earlier this year - but had not formally awarded the necessary telecoms license and access to radio spectrum.

Customer have the choice of either switching immediately to the new GSM network - although the coverage is patchy, or migrating to S-Fone's CDMA network for a couple of months, then being switched to HT Mobile's GSM network when it is ready.

According to figures from the Mobile World, HT Mobile launched its services early last year but had only secured around 185,000 customers by the end of September. The country has 34 million phone subscribers, of which nearly 28 million are connected to other operator GSM networks, and remainder are on CDMA networks, S-Fone (3.7 million) and VP Telecom (2.5 million)

Posted to the site on 16th May 2008