Viettel: Step to Global Business

Viettel is the largest mobile operator in Vietnam—a country with nearly 100 million people. The company provides GSM, 3G, wireless, fixed, and broadband services to nearly 60 million individual and enterprise subscribers. With a view towards expanding internationally, Viettel has established itself in Laos, Cambodia, Haiti, Peru, and Mozambique. Viettel is seeking more overseas market opportunities, and more countries will be included on this list. In the future, Viettel could be a global symbol of Vietnam. How has Viettel developed globally? And how have they addressed issues in their global expansion? ZTE Technologies interviewed Tong Viet Trung, vice president of Viettel Network, at the Viettel headquarters in Hanoi. Trung is in charge of IT infrastructure, marketing, and business policy at Viettel.

Q: Could you give an overview of the development of Viettel in Vietnam and explain how Viettel has achieved success? 

A: We were the fresh guy in the commercial telecom market at the beginning of 2003. In the first two to three years, we explored our business mode, marketing policy, and position in the market, and we constructed our fixed and mobile networks. At the end of 2006, we started accelerating our penetration and development of the local market. We promoted a lot of new products and services to attract subscribers. We doubled our subscriber base in 2007 and gained another 10 million subscribers by 2008. At the beginning of 2009, we had around 40 million subscribers and were the largest mobile operator in Vietnam. However, we thought we could do even better when the Vietnamese government released 3G licenses that year. New 3G products opened up more possibilities to attract new subscribers and increase the ARPU of existing subscribers. At the end of 2010, our 3G subscriber base was around 60 million, the largest in Vietnam. That is our brief story. It has not been easy going, but we are definitely proud of our achievements.

If we talk about the reasons for success, I would say the most important is to be different from your competitors. There are eight operators in this country of less than 100 million people. You need to come up with marketing and service policies that are different from others and that are easily identifiable. Then, you need to realize that difference quickly and provide your customers with constant experiences and attractions. Fortunately, we have the most efficient team in this market, and our rhythm is always faster than our competitor’s. This is the key to bringing all policies to fruition.

Q: Viettel has penetrated into many countries. What has been your policy on global expansion during the economic recession?

A: The global economy is in winter, but Viettel, is looking for opportunities amid the danger of depression. In a crisis, some gates are easier to open. Of course, you need to be more careful in a depressed global economy and really think about your target country’s background, your marketing policy, and the potential profits. To date, we have chosen the right country at the right time and have used the right marketing policies. Our overseas branches usually capture a lion’s share of the market within two to three years, and profits soon follow.

Q: There can be many problems when expanding a business in different countries. How does Viettel deal with such problems? 

A: When expanding a business globally you encounter a lot of problems. From our experience, one of the biggest problems is different infrastructure. Not every country has the same power, traffic, and logistics infrastructure as Vietnam. Another headache is regional differences in telecom regulation. You need to understand the regulations in each country and apply them to your operations very carefully. Cultural difference is also a problem, especially in countries that are far from Vietnam. Our solution is to prepare well and make a very detailed plan before we enter a country. Leveraging previous business experience in new markets helps us reduce this risk. At the beginning of a project, we use our own Vietnamese team, and then we set up a local team to maintain the network in the later phase.

Q: How does Viettel win new subscribers and increase ARPU in a new market?

A: A new operator wins subscribers by providing something different and more attractive things than their competitors. Fortunately, we have much experience in exploring markets. This allows us to rapidly customize our services in line with changes in the market. After we have won over subscribers, we increase ARPU by analyzing the requirements and desires of our subscribers. We determine their consumption habits. Here, we have the advantage of business intelligence (BI) provided by ZTE. We obtain business data from each country and feed it to the Vietnam BI centre. We achieve a lot from analyzing such intelligence and knowing our customers. By comparing the consumption styles in different countries, we gain hard evidence that informs our policy making.

Q: How have you constructed your IT system for a global business?  

A: This is a very important part of our global policy. An IT support system is the infrastructure for providing differentiated services and unique customer experiences. We unify the IT systems at global sites and reduce maintenance complexity. Another key point is to keep the IT system flexible so that it can cope with challenges that arise from fast-changing market requirements. We have established our own team to develop our billing and customer care system (BCCS) independently. This will make our IT system more flexible and controllable. It is also critical to choosing an experienced vendor with good products and solutions. This is why we have adopted ZTE’s flexible charging solution for most of our overseas sites. We have cooperated with ZTE in Vietnam for many years, and both teams have accumulated considerable experience through this collaboration. ZTE is excellent in implementing overseas projects, and this significantly reduces risk.

Q: How does Viettel innovate with IT infrastructure to be competitive?   

A: We have a special team dedicated to researching new technology and finding ways to apply this technology so that we gain commercial value. The team are excellent at their job. After a technology has been researched, we encourage our R&D team to trial it in new ways. ZTE is one of our partners that help us innovate with our IT system. The ZTE team exchanges ideas with our engineering team on a regular basis. This year we have begun innovating on our charging and billing platform. This is exciting.

Q: How do you plan to evolve your IT system?  

A: We have used ZTE’s online charging platform and BI product to develop our own BCCS system, and this has been very successful for both sides. We are now exploring a convergence evolution. We want to establish a unified, converged billing platform to support all services, networks, and prepaid and post-paid subscribers. We want to bundle our networks and services as an enhancement to our product catalogue. If that is successful, we will consider applying this to other overseas branches. We also have plans for a self-developed IT system. We want to make the IT system more flexible and manageable.

Q: Finally, what are your thoughts on future cooperation with ZTE in the IT domain?