SK Telecom Creates Sensation in Vietnam
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
SK Telecom, the top South Korean mobile carrier, has been winning the hearts of consumers in Vietnam rapidly with its mobile phone service in the Southeast Asian country over the past four years, according to the company Wednesday.
Since the start of its ``S-Fone’’ service, which was launched as the first-ever CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile phone service in the country in July 2003, SK Telecom has secured more than three million subscribers.
SK Telecom regards the achievement as an obvious sign that its S-Fone business could join the mainstream of the Vietnamese market, dominated by the European-style GSM (global system for mobile communications) service, as a CDMA leader.
Company officials recollect that the decision of a capital increase in late 2005 became a crucial turning point which pulled the company up to the status of a major service provider in Vietnam.
Vietnam’s mobile phone market was expanding rapidly, buoyed by the high economic growth rate of 7-8 percent. SK Telecom judged that it was a ``proper time’’ for investment and decided in November that year to increase the capital by $280 million.
And the S-Fone subscribers began to rise drastically _ the number which stood below 400,000 as of late 2005 jumped to 1.5 million in late 2006 and three million (8.8 percent of the total mobile phone users) in September this year.
SK Telecom Vietnam expanded its service to cover all 64 provinces from 37 in late 2006 and introduced the CDMA 1x EV-DO service in five major cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Danang last month for the first time in the country to provide VOD/MOD services.
Currently, the South Korean unit is ranked as the fourth player following Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone out of the total six service providers, mostly operated by the Vietnamese government.
``We plan to increase the market share from the current 8-percent level to over 20 percent in the coming several years with our differentiated call rates policy, additional services and cell phones,’’ said Cho Seung-won, chief of SK Telecom Vietnam.
Vietnam is one of the world’s fastest growing economies with a population of about 84 million. As of late 2006, only 23.9 percent of the people use mobile phones and the market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years.
SK Telecom, which has tried to find more business opportunities abroad, expects that its global business will be placed on the right track thanks to the efforts of its Vietnamese unit through the ``economies of scale,’’ a company spokesman in Seoul said.