HCM City – Mytel, the Viettel-owned mobile operator in Myanmar, has signed up more than a million subscribers in just 10 days since it officially began operations.

There are several reasons for this achievement, including the fact the company had set up the most extensive telecom infrastructure in Myanmar even before starting operations.

It has laid 30,000km of fibre-optic cable, or 50 per cent of the country’s total cable infrastructure, covering 80 per cent of the population.

It is the only mobile network to provide 4G services nation-wide covering 300 out of 330 towns while the next biggest competitor only covers 185.

Mytel has set up a nation-wide distribution system with 50 stores and 50,000 sales agents, 70 per cent of them in rural and remote areas.

The company is also offering very attractive promotions to mark its inauguration.

Nguyễn Thanh Nam, Mytel’s general director, said while Myanmar has experienced rapid economic growth, mobile phone penetration in the country has remained low, creating huge opportunities for the telecom sector, especially Viettel.

“We are targeting two to three million customers in Myanmar in 2018.”

Mytel began operations on June 9.

Myanmar is Viettel’s 10th foreign market and its largest in terms of population (53 million). Myanmar is also Viettel’s market with the highest economic growth rate, which was 7 per cent last year.

But it is also a very competitive market: telecom services are already used by 90 per cent of the population, calling and data tariffs are cheap, and there is fierce competition from international networks like Norway’s Telenor, the 13th world’s biggest, and Qatar’s Ooredoo, the leading network in the Middle East.

As of Mytel’s opening, Viettel Group’s registered foreign investment is over US$2 billion. — VNS