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ETL pledges better service amid strong 2011 income forecasts
Enterprise of Telecommu-nications Lao (ETL) is budgeting for increases in revenue earnings of about 7 percent and tax contributions to national revenue of 10 percent this year.
“We expect the income will rise to 453 billion kip (US$56.4 million) this year,” ETL Director General Mr. Khammouane Xomsihapanya reported on Friday.
The new ETL customer service centre in Chanthabouly District, Vientiane.
“The contribution to national revenue will also climb to over 79 billion kip (Almost US$10 million),” he pointed out at the company's annual meeting in Vientiane.
The company only received about 422 billion kip last year, a drop of about 8 percent from the previous year.
The national revenue contribution was about 72 billion kip, about 3.2 percent down from 2009.
Last year's income came mainly from mobile phone services, which accounted for 77.5 percent of the total.
This year expenditure will be over 428 billion kip, a 7 percent increase from last year when expenditure was about 399 billion kip.
This year the company will invest many billions of kip on service development and network expansion.
This includes widening mobile phone services with an additional 400,000 numbers on 3G services, network expansion to 1.4 million numbers, base station installation, improvement of Internet services, and installation of transmission line systems or back bond cable system and fixed line facilities.
“The developments must be completed by June with services commencing in July,” Mr. Khammouane said.
This year the company expects to attract an additional 220,000 mobile phone customers, 1,000 fixed line telephone clients, 2,000 internet clients and 200 clients for other services.
It currently has over 985,000 mobile phone customers, up about 3.6 percent from 2009, over 18,000 fixed line phone customers, an increase of about 3 percent, and about 3,500 internet customers, an increase of 156 percent from 2009.
ETL has 10 branches and six service units, more than 730 staff, 914 mobile phone base stations, and network services in cities, rural villages and overseas.
It now holds about 37 percent of the market share in the telecommunications sector, and mobile phone services covering 5,683 villages in 143 districts, or about 65 percent of the villages nationwide.
Laos currently has four telecommunication companies: Lao Telecom-munications Company (LTC), ETL, Star Telecom and the Millicom Lao Company.
Until the mid-1990s, Laos had only two telephone companies. Then, in 1995, LTC signed an agreement with the government to become the only supplier of telephone services for the next five years.
When the contract expired in 2000, ETL was established. Millicom Lao, which provides only mobile phone services, came into operation in 2003 and Star Telecom was launched in 2008.
Star Telecom is a joint venture between Lao Asia Telecom State Enterprise, which opened in 2002, and Viettel Global of Vietnam.
vientiane times
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