Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnamesemobile service operators are racing to reduce the charges for roaming servicesafter the Ministry of Information and Communications allowed mobile operatorsto negotiate with foreign partners about international roaming services sinceJune 1.

Military-run telecom group Viettel announced that all its pre-paidand post-paid subscribers would be offered preferential international dataroaming service rates when travelling to Japan, the Republic of Korea (RoK) andAustralia up to September 15.

Especially, when using the data roaming services of the RoK’s SKT andKTF, Japanese Softbank and NTT Domoco and Australian Telstra, Viettel customerswould only have to pay 22 VND/10 KB.

Compared to the current data fees at 2,363 VND/10KB (for pre-paidsubscription), the new rates have been decreased by up to 99 percent.

Previously, with the advantages of owning mobile networks in threecountries in Indochina that include Viettel (Vietnam), Metfone (Cambodia) andUnitel (Laos), the operator no longer collected roaming fees from subscribersin the three countries.

With a larger coverage than Viettel’s, VinaPhone has alsoannounced data roaming fee reduction by 20 percent to 80 percent, which isapplicable in countries having VinaPhone partners.

According to the new rates, VinaPhone will only have a rate of 1,000VND/10KB instead of having different rates for the five areas.

The Tuoi tre (Youth) newspaper quoted a MobiFonerepresentative as saying that the operator had not yet announced a new roamingfees, but it was negotiating for competitive roaming fees.

The reduction of data roaming charges started from the newregulation on roaming charges, however, according to many experts,this is the consequence of the popularity of Over-The-Top (OTT) applications,such as Facebook Messenger, Viber or Zalo, which allow users to make free callsor send free text messages only through an internet connection.

Vu Hoang Lien, Chairman of the Vietnam Internet Association, saidthat as the cost of international roaming was high, travellers ultilised freeWiFi or purchased SIMs from foreign operators to use OTT services to call home,instead of using the roaming service.

Commenting on the race for data fee reduction, the chairman saidthat the purpose of this was to ensure subscribers used the roaming service,and the carriers could earn revenue from data services when customers use theinternet on domestic 3G and 4G SIMs.

Huynh Thanh Phi, a marketing expert, said that the only way foroperators to compete with OTTs is to reduce calling and SMS rates.

However, this was not a good solution as free WiFi in Vietnam hadbeen too popular and using OTT had become a habit with Vietnamese users, headded.

Phi said that carriers would have to bring call and message closerto zero in the future and earn money from data services.-VNA