Mytel – Viettel’s brand in Myanmar – reached five million subscribers on Thursday just eight months after its launch. Mytel targeted to reach the milestone of 10 million subscribers this year.

Viettel officially inaugurated Mytel in Myanmar on June 9, 2018 – its 10th international mobile phone network. Mytel is the fourth largest network provider in Myanmar and aims to become the biggest in terms of both infrastructure and business results.

Prior to launching Mytel, Viettel Global, an arm of Viettel Group set an ambitious target of reaching 2-3 million customers in 2018. Just one month after launch, however, this target has been changed to four million customers in 2018 and Mytel is expected to be profitable by the end of 2019. Among Mytel’s more than four million active customers, more than 70 per cent are using 4G services. This is also a record for Viettel’s global markets.

A survey on mobile phone use in Myanmar showed that more than 90 per cent of surveyed people were impressed with Mytel. In addition, 94 per cent of respondents knew that Mytel is the fourth operator in Myanmar and was from Viet Nam.

In Myanmar, Mytel is the only telecommunications company that can provide a complete package of mobile, fixed line, transmission line and IT services nationwide.

The high number of business customers was due to careful preparation of infrastructure, mechanisms and services. In addition, Mytel has advantages of co-operating with big distributors, especially Skynet – the biggest TV provider in Myanmar. With more than 400 agents, 130,000 sales locations and over one million customers nationwide, Skynet presented a big opportunity for Mytel in 2018 and following years.

Among Viettel’s 10 international markets, Myanmar is the largest and has the highest potential in terms of growth, although at the beginning of operations, planned losses would be substantial due to high costs and depreciation.

Mytel’s growth rate is rare, especially in the context of slowing development in the international telecommunications market.

Mytel was expected to soon record profit and would contribute significantly to Viettel Global’s profit in the future.

In an interview with Reuters, Le Dang Dung, Chairman of Viettel, said that growth in Myanmar was rare in the telecommunications market and they still have growth potential. He rated Myanmar as one of the most promising markets for Viettel. Viettel wants to double the number of subscribers in Myanmar by the end of 2019 to about 10 million subscribers.

Viettel and its local partners including Myanmar National Holding Public and Star High Public deployed a 4G network worth US$1.5 billion in June 2018.

Dung also revealed that Viettel is negotiating to buy shares in Malaysian and Indonesian telecom firms but refuses to provide more information. — VNS