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Viettel expects big overseas business
The country's leading telecom and internet service provider, the Viettel Corporation, expects to increase its overseas revenues by 50 per cent this year.
It plans to expand to three or four new foreign markets with a total population of 100 million.
"By the end of 2012, Viettel will have 190 million subscribers outside Viet Nam," Nguyen Manh Hung, its deputy general director, said.
Last year Viettel's foreign investment rose sharply, while its overseas turnover was $500 million, and profits, undisclosed, were estimated to have risen eight-fold.
It has operations in Cambodia, Laos, Haiti, Mozambique, and Peru. Viettel reported a profit of VND20 trillion (around US$1 billion) last year, globally ranking 80th in terms of turnover in the telecom industry but 30th in terms of profits.
By 2015 it expects to have 100 million local subscribers and 500 million abroad.
"The local market is big but saturated," Hung said.
"Therefore, overseas ventures will open up the world market and form a foundation for long-term development and research and producing new ICT equipment."
Mali is Viettel's next target, and it hopes to be up and running in the West African nation this year. Other Vietnamese telecom firms too are eyeing foreign markets. The Viet Nam Post and Telecommunications Corporation (VNPT) will transfer its share in VNPT Global to MobiFone, one of its subsidiaries, to boost the latter's overseas efforts.
VNPT Global provides telecom and internet services in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Czech Republic.
"It is hard to make overseas investment at this time but, to maintain development, there is no choice," VNPT deputy general director Phan Hoang Duc said.
vietnamnews
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