Viettel launches Mytel in Myanmar with heavy promotions

Viettel will officially launch Mytel on June 9

Accordingly, Viettel will charge calling, texting, and data for its international roaming customers in Myanmar at the same rate as in Vietnam.

Notably, calls for Viettel subscribers travelling in Myanmar to other Viettel numbers in Vietnam or Mytel numbers will cost VND2,000 (88 cent) per minute (one seventh of other networks’ rates), texting will be VND500 per message (other networks charge VND5,000-7,000 on average), and data will cost VND200 per MB (95 per cent less than in the past).

Besides, Viettel subscribers travelling to Myanmar will not be charged to receive phone calls.

To mark the grand opening of Mytel in Myanmar, along with Viettel, other members of the Viettel Group, namely Unitel (Laos) and Metfone (Cambodia), will also offer international roaming promotions for Myanmar.

In addition, Mytel will offer the same promotion for international roaming in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Myanmar has seen an incredible growth in mobile phone users in the past few years

With the new international roaming policy, Viettel becomes the first mobile service provider in the world to charge no international roaming fees in several countries in the region.

Doan Dai Phong, director of Viettel’s International Business Centre, said, “Myanmar is one of the first roaming markets for Vietnam. In the spirit of ‘Roam like home,’ meaning international roaming fees are as cheap as domestic ones, we expect all Viettel subscribers coming to Myanmar to experience our ‘flat world’ in the telecom and mobile services sector.”

Mytel is the brand name of Telecom International Myanmar—a joint venture between Viettel Global, a Viettel subsidiary, and its two partners in Myanmar, Star High Public Company and Myanmar National Telecom Holding Public (MNTH).

Viettel will offer the same promotion for international roaming in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Viettel has contributed 66 per cent of the total Vietnamese investment capital registered in Myanmar

Mytel has the total investment capital of $1.5 billion, accounting for up to 66 per cent of the Vietnamese-registered investment capital in Myanmar.

With the project, Vietnam jumped from the 10^th to 7^th among 49 countries and territories investing in Myanmar, and is the second largest ASEAN investor in the country (as of the end of May 2018).

Mytel is the 4^th mobile phone network in Myanmar, following state-owned MPT, which has a 42 per cent market share, Telenor from Norway (35 per cent), and Ooredoo from Qatar (23 per cent).

Myanmar has been Viettel’s foreign market with the highest economic growth rate, at 7 per cent so far, and the largest population (53 million). Myanmar is Viettel’s strategic international market in 2018. It also has high growth in the telecommunications and IT sectors.

From having the lowest mobile phone usage rate in the world (higher only than North Korea), Myanmar has experienced a stunning growth in per capita mobile phone SIM usage from 10 per cent to 90 per cent in only three years of opening its economy.

The total number of subscribers has risen from 600,000 to over 16 million.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Myanmar could increase its economy’s scale four-fold to $200 billion by 2030.

The IMF also said the finance, banking, energy, telecommunications, and IT sectors offer the most opportunities for foreign investors in terms of both market potential and human resources.